When Things Were Brighter
by VegetaCold
Summary: The Titans don't realize that they still have Slade's probes in their body-until Slade returns years after the completion of the series to make Robin his apprentice once again with an antidote. Robin's POV. No Yaoi. Do not own the series (of course - -) but I do own this concept.
1. Chapter 1

"Robin."

I heard that voice—that voice so hauntingly familiar to me. The voice I knew wouldn't ever be silenced and had only hoped childishly that I would never have to hear again—that maybe, just maybe, the owner would grow tired of tormenting my friends and I and move onto some other, unfortunate kid with intent to save those in need. Maybe I was the only one—or maybe he just liked me. But he lingered here in my life like a repressive fog which tainted everyone around me and I felt like it was my fault—like there was something wrong I was doing. And the voice only reinforced that in my mind, accompanying his presence and reminding everyone—maybe just me—that as long as I was here, he was, too.

It was all about me, after all. It had _always been._

"Rob-_in_…"

I hated that—that calm, soft tone he used with me and only me. I could notice the difference, always, no matter who; it was calm, yes, with everyone, but there was a hardness about it—the implication that he was not friendly and should not be messed with. This applied to even someone like Terra, who had briefly joined him; coolness almost as if to cover hatred and all his underlying plans possessing his tone which didn't match his words, those falsifying her position with him. But with me it was different, and even if I didn't want to believe it I knew it—Slade approached me with a much different attitude than anyone else. It was like—a softness that was real and though calculating, not necessarily _cold_—more than anything, friendly, _welcoming_. As if to say, _you don't need to worry, Robin, your life is not at risk, never at risk…_ and I firmly believed this; I was not stupid, and I wouldn't deny even though I was embarrassed and angered by it that often he coddled me when it came to any encounter we had, as if he were fighting a toddler (but maybe he was). Because it didn't matter if we were fighting and I was going my hardest—he never was. I could feel him holding back and I knew that that had never been the case with Terra or my friends or anyone else for that matter. I knew he wasn't afraid to throw some punches my way but full out—even if I had been progressing, I knew he was stronger; _experienced—_could have easily ended my life. But he wouldn't. My mind was caught replaying that moment when the two of us were on the rooftop and he'd knocked me off the edge only to grab me at the last second before I fell.

He said he wasn't done with me, and I knew it didn't just apply to that fight, there and then. Because he wasn't, not now. That was why the singsong-y voice was calling, drawing me out of the unnatural sleep he'd put me in, which I was exhaustedly clinging to, like a little kid begging to sleep just five more minutes…

"Robin." I felt a hand on my face—a larger, really strong hand, but not clumsy or inexperienced. It moved slowly and deliberately, as if not to startle me, over the corner of my eye and then brushing hair away from my forehead. And even though the action was soft the feeling was invasive, personal, and I groaned, struggling between the urge to ignore it and go back asleep and the almost need to find out who or what was touching me. I should have wanted the latter—should have jumped up and faced whatever stood before me then; but however I'd gotten to sleep, it had really made me out of my element and it was quite possibly the last thing I was up to doing.

Even though the voice was prodding and intrusive, and even though then I already knew it, its owner: "Come, Robin, you must be awake for the procedure or you won't survive."

Warm yellow light, illuminating me only in the darkness that surrounded us. The sound of cogs turning and gears working, quietly in the background like white noise. My vision was blurred but I could make out the figure, wearing the cold metal suit with that mask and that one, haunting eye, staring down at me intently.

I was belted down to a table and I could feel that the instant my body lurched instinctively, not calculated; my hands bound by thick cables and my body secured tightly with straps. My body wrestled with them at once but my eyes were locked onto the figure, clearer once I had blinked and really come awake. I opened my mouth and was shrieking even before I really had time to process what was happening—only reacting when my mind recalled the image of Slade burned there when I had been hallucinating on the dust from the mask. Too similar, belted down to a table while he stood over me watching. The shriek was pure terror and it was uncontrolled—not measured with any amount of careful- or thoughtfulness.

I found almost immediately a mask placed over my mouth and nose and couldn't help inhaling the gas released by it as I screamed; a heavy led blanket placed over my entire being so that I would not break my legs or arms or rupture my organs in trying to escape the ties in such an instinctive, animal-like action. At once I was made still by it, unable to move, and my screaming was silenced by a tranquility that fell over me; my eyes drooped and my mind relaxed, again immediately. I heard vaguely Slade declare that the 'operation' would have to wait just before I fell once again into unconscious, and stayed there for what seemed like a long time.

"Robin."

I groaned as that soft voice penetrated my sleep yet again. There was soreness and stiffness in every part of my body, which I still could not move, even if I had wanted to; but my mind was so foggy and far-gone that I don't think I was capable of such thought. At first I didn't even try to open my eyes because they felt glued shut, and like before I just wanted to drift back to sleep and stay there, even though he would tell me I'd been sleeping this time for an hour and a half on top of however long I had before that—not that I would have seen much of anything had I done so; my eyes were as blurred as ever and made it that much harder to resist going back to sleep.

"_Robin._" Again that voice disturbed me like a hot poker being pressed into my stomach. It was, as it had been before, very hard to ignore, and it was becoming steadily apparent that it was not a voice I should be ignoring, because the more it called the better I could recognize it. The soft tone—the coddling, as if he was afraid to speak too harshly to me in case I might crumble or shatter like windows broken by shrill singing. Again not to say that it was not intrusive, but calculated; a voice I dreaded and dreamt about and which never left my mind.

I groaned and was tugging open my eyes—eyes again blurred by long and dreamless sleep, peaceful I guess—better than what I had had the first time, when my dreams circulated Gotham City, down to the cave where I made my oath so long ago and away from the dreary circus, to the tower in its early decay where I had come for refuge and would have never pictured to look as it did at present day. So much nostalgia it made me breathless and that sleep little more than a painful analysis of my past and my mistakes, not restful what-so-ever. A perfect storm to lead to an uncontrolled screech, built up by sleepy and ghostly, haunted memories of my unwilling high from Slade's mask-dust. So sleeping long and easily was a relief and it was probably needed, though not preferred and definitely not wanted in regards to my circumstances—waking to the eye.

It looked down at me intently, the body leaned over me interestedly, the hands clasped behind the back as always. His demeanor was calm and thoughtful and for once I didn't sense any evil plan which may or may not be circulating within his brain and shining purposefully in his eye. He was just observing, and even though I was barely awake I noticed that.

I was of course more calm than before but again the sleepy haze I lingered in made it really hard to understand much of anything that was going on—but I knew who stood over me, as a certainty. It wasn't leading to any conclusions quite yet and I didn't want it to, not necessarily, because in many ways it was easier just not to think and just to be, and as of that moment I wasn't too uncomfortable; sore, yes, dizzy, yes, but I was actually pretty comfortable where I lay and was warm—drawing me away from the cold hospital room where Slade had approached me in the darkness like a ghost and thus forth set an image of him in my mind which would never be erased though it was not technically real, along with his skull when his mask had been knocked off and he hadn't had his flesh back from Trigon yet. And many others as well but these two stand out distinctly, make me cringe. And I should have been screaming this time, too, images evoked in my head, but the drastic change of setting and the fact that I was too doped up to care just yet were making it seem pointless, impossible. I wasn't even thinking about it.

"There you are, awake, good—good morning, Robin. Are you feeling better?" Slade said easily, softly. I was dimly aware that he was fiddling with something that sounded metal and sharp on—again, judging by sound—a table to my left. But I still wasn't thinking clearly and didn't think too much of it, only focused solely on that eye and groaning in response to his question because it was all that would come out of my mouth, and it was not calculated.

"Still exhausted, I see," he mused, looking down at me with interest. "Not surprising, however. You put up quite a fight, didn't you?—but then, that's to be expected as well, because you made it very clear you would…and so did I. But I enjoy it, Robin. Things—they weren't the same with Terra. I missed the good old days, just the two of us, didn't you?"

Again, I could only groan, though being drawn further out of my sleep by his words it was becoming a little more alarmed and relevant.

"Ah what a little fool she was, what a spoiled brat. She took everything others gave her and threw it back into their faces as if she could hold a candle to the skill she was surrounded by—though not surprising, she was never the brightest bulb on the tree." My eyes were clear enough after blinking several times when I heard Terra's mentioning, and I could clearly see him holding up a needle in the light and filling it with some strange clear liquid; and that was when I woke up totally, and stared at him with wide eyes as he continued, "And now after our years of separation, Robin, I can see more than ever that you were meant to be my apprentice from the very start. I thought you would have slipped while I was away but you made me proud today in proving me wrong."

"S-Slade," was the only thing I could manage to gasp out, and even then it took a few minutes and it was barely uttered, just a little breath I'd been holding in. As I started to shake in a rush of terror I realized that once again I was tightly strapped down onto the table, (padded at least), and that the lead blanket was still covering me so that I couldn't move a bit. Not that I was even strong enough to try. My whole body felt numb, as if the only thing I owned of me was my mind.

"Relax, Robin," Slade said immediately as he noticed I was now awake and pretty well aware of what was going on. "I have no intention of hurting you. This process will be quick and painless because I've numbed you. You won't feel a thing and I do mean that. Just relax."

Relax? How could I relax when he was coming at me with a needle, when I was helplessly strapped down to a table, when my memory was returning of how I had got there and what he had done? What I would later learn was only the night before felt so long ago and distant but at the same time felt so close and personal but still blurred and hazy, like it was all a dream; this was the night we would encounter Slade for the first time since his return thanks to Trigon. He had left us alone for a surprising chunk of time—only intercepting us once, and not even me—just Beast Boy when it came to the girl who looked an awful lot like Terra but it never came to fruition whether or not she actually was, and that frustrated and broke his heart. I didn't know what to do; I knew Slade was still out there and he had better things to do than to taunt Beast Boy over Terra—I should have been smart enough to realize that it was a warning sign, a little heads up, maybe a gentle reintroduction of his part in our weird lives. But more than anything I was trying to help Beast Boy to feel better and maybe that was what Slade wanted—me distracted. The whole team, actually, was trying to do things for him but since he saw that girl, it was never the same. He was sad and lonely and had little to do with us—a shell of his former self. I hated Terra for that—hated that she made him feel that way. And I didn't think about Slade, not much. I dragged Beast Boy around to movies and for pizza and to the mall to try to cheer him up, but I didn't think about Slade. Where was my mind then?

One evening the city was very quiet and it unnerved everybody. We always felt that when things were quiet, there was trouble cooking. We spent the majority of the night sitting in the tower waiting for something to come up; even though in recent days we'd actually captured a lot of villains and sent them to prison, we barely rested because we knew there'd be someone else; and for some reason we were scared and thrown off and wishing for the "good old days" when things were simple, just the five of us fighting crime and not having to worry about bad to good conversions or vice versa. For some reason, we were rigid and found no joy in fighting; our hearts weren't into it and it felt as though we'd gotten really soft, really bored, really tired. We were on the verge of being lazy, and thinking about that only made us depressed. So almost strangely we hoped for more crime so we didn't feel useless and displaced and out of our element. And maybe those feelings of foreboding were our own need for something to validate us. Sad, really, that our lives were virtually sitting around waiting for the same criminals to break out of jail or reappear, because that was what made us relevant to the world. Without the criminals we were nothing, but with them we were nothing _new_. And I guess internally I was wanting something more, something new, different, and that's where I think I got into trouble. I wanted to make Beast Boy happy and the rest of the team, too, but when I reflected on my life now and realized that all I did was sit around in the tower and wait for duty to call, now rarely, my self-esteem was quickly reduced to nothing and for once in the longest time, I wanted out—wanted away from them because I knew painfully that things could never be the same, could never have that innocent light about them.

And that's where it's really true that you have to be careful what you wish for, because I got something new that night—something familiar but strangely the kind of thing I was almost wishing would happen. Something invigorating.

Cinderblock was again on the prowl and that was the first time I thought of Slade in a while. I remembered that when Cinderblock was around Slade usually followed closely; those two being affiliated with one another. Our last encounter with him got me thinking that this was one of those villains who didn't work alone; but this time I was really remembering and thinking about Slade, as I reflected on why the hunk of rock was attacking so much. Again, a diversion, a distraction, but a warning and a soft introduction to a new reign of Slade. As if he wanted me to feel on edge and to have him on my mind constantly with subtle little dark snip-its of the past but not actually realize it at the same time; and he had achieved this, certainly. Like I was being haunted by the dust on his mask, he was there and he was real but at the same time he wasn't and there was no stopping him. It's unnerving to think about, actually—the fact that he had probably stayed away from me for all that time to make me softer, lulled into false security, and then slowly and easily work himself back into my world. I'd never see it coming—I _didn't_.

And that had been that night: I was thinking about him and really remembering him, but at the same time probably not really actually expecting that Slade would show up—feeling that for some reason the time passed had made us immune. But knowing, at the same time, _feeling_, that like the hallucination had said, I was never alone and he was always there, always watching. Those sensations crept upon me but in keeping with this in-between state I couldn't identify them; I could only declare that I was uneasy and restless. Something was wrong; and last night had felt no different but actually worse, because something in me was going off, saying, _he's closer than ever now; he's right here, watching, waiting to strike. Tonight'll be the night. _My foresight was keen in that sense but sense itself, not so much. It had dulled, I think, from so much time away from criminals and the constant fight of them. My mind and my body were softer, more inept, as if so drug down by the realization of my life that they were dulled by the total feeling of uncaring removed-ness. I would learn though that I had not lost that; that when an adversary like Slade appeared I would be at top-everything—because he was what drove me and even though I don't like to admit it, I knew deep inside that without Slade I would be a wreck and I'd be worthless; without Slade, this Robin wouldn't exist. I know it. Maybe that was why I was so sensitive to him—yet unknowingly so. Maybe I was pushing him out of my mind in order to deny that truth but at the same time always having him right there, lurking over me and making me realize how much I wanted him. The truth is Slade and I had a connection and that could never be broken, no matter how many years passed;

I would _always _linger internally in a dream-like state where Slade and I were back in the "good-old days" he talked of, before Terra, before Raven, before everything; back when Slade and I were locked in a little box together that kept the other the only thing on the mind. We were everything to the other for the longest time; the soul, the breath, the very essence of life. We rose every morning and we did what we did for the other. And even separated I would not be able to forget something like that.

He attacked the city that night in a manner which I probably should have seen as suspicious and nonsensical, but again I really wasn't thinking—really wasn't applying all I knew about how criminals and this city worked because things just weren't the way I remembered and it seemed pointless to apply that when everything else had followed its own crazy path and totally disregarded our past. But had I been thinking I would have realized that it was obviously a trap—bait for a much larger plan than just Cinderblock causing some damage to the city. Of course it was like his role earlier when I'd first become Slade's apprentice, or the role of the non-existent detonator he'd cautioned us against and we'd so stupidly believed, in our earliest days when we didn't know anything. Now we didn't either; we'd come full circle it seemed—and I realize that maybe last night was a real rendition of the good old days I had longed for; a safety deriving from Slade's obsession with me and somehow knowing that things were still benign, harmless, soft and bright. Still in the days of our really connectedness—again, before Terra, Trigon, the works. It was just me and him and last night was like an odd nostalgic dream, one I didn't really mind having but felt chilled by, and couldn't stop thinking about. It lingered.

What Cinderblock did was simple in itself; the quiet broken by thudding on the streets, empty because people too expected a villain to appear and cause harm; and unlike the Titans they'd rather do without the trouble and just go about their lives peacefully and without having to worry whether or not they'd die the moment they stepped out of their home (or even in their home). They were living in fear and they were getting tired of it; tired of criminals and tired of the Teen Titans. They resented us because they believed criminals were drawn to us and I was slowly beginning to resent that. It was hard enough to save the city each and every day and the fact that they were giving us a hard time about it was like a slap in the face. But still, when duty called, we were there; there last night, in the narrow streets several miles from the docks where the city was the most populated, meaning real danger in Cinderblock's case. So many lives at risk; and we were really the only thing that could save them. So the five of us headed off to the city without much thought, silently, almost as though we could feel the end was near but none of us wanted to address it, face it, for fear of what it would bring. The sun was hot and red and low in the sky and the sunset might have been beautiful any other night, but for some reason I felt suffocated and scared and as though there was truly no escaping the evil in the world; I felt confused and I felt helpless but more than anything I felt _certain _that our time had come—that the end was near, really this time, and soon the Titans would be no more. Surrounded by that sky in that moment I honestly believed it, and was torn between wanting to go fight Cinderblock to get my mind off of it and the realization that what would happen there was no better. Again, something was wrong and I knew it.

Even before we were intercepted by Slade.

From out of nowhere Starfire was hit by one of the grenades Slade used. Imploding on impact it sent her tumbling to the ground before she even knew what hit her. And subsequently, Cyborg, Beast Boy and Raven all found themselves in the same situation, torn from the air by the immensely painful blasts. I expected the same for myself, to be thrown from my motorcycle and onto the ground while waves of pain rolled over me unrelentingly—but amazingly, that didn't happen. And after a second of waiting for the impact that never came, squinting my eyes in preparation, I opened them finally in confusion and hesitation and saw Slade standing in front of me, his arms neatly folded behind his back and looking at me with a single glinting eye. My friends all lay around him briefly stunned, groaning in pain and probably still not exactly sure what had happened, but he wasn't paying them any attention—he was fixated on me and I instantly sensed it.

"Hello, Robin," Slade said softly, the eye gleaming gently. In the low light it seemed to almost glow and it was instantly off-putting, as if Slade himself were not already. "It's been awhile, hasn't it? I hope you haven't been slacking while I was away."

"Slade." I growled it out like it was the only thing on my mind when in reality it had been literally the last thing I had been expecting (maybe at surface-level, at least) and the last thing I had really dreaded when it came to the events of that night; like I said, the idea of seeing Slade again for some odd, horrible and desperate reason actually excited me, like for instance you and your worst enemy were once again in the same city and you were just wondering what would happen next. It was kind of invigorating, and kind of pleased me for some reason—filled some void there. But maybe that was part of the game; maybe it was part of the game to make sure he knew that I had no intention to be friends with him and was angrier than ever—angry enough to kill him. Because the growl _was _natural, of course—natural and uncontrolled. It was what I would have done any other time I'd ever seen him because even though I felt myself needing him I detested him at the same time. And now he'd just gunned down my friends and was using that typical "patronize Robin" voice I hated so much. He was asking for it but maybe he knew that, and maybe that was part of the game, too. Maybe he liked it the way I did.

"_Robin_," he cooed in that soft way he always did, that patronizing, yet maybe almost caring tone of voice he used only with me. It might have made me angry and I made it seem that it had—the reflex was again natural—but in many ways it was familiar and I welcomed it, strangely. "I thought you'd be happy to see me. It's been a long time and I've missed you."

"Well I haven't missed you!" I snapped, again a lie through my teeth but it didn't matter much; the truth would have been no better, especially not around my friends, who were conscious enough then to hear it. They were already getting up and brushing themselves off; getting into fighting stance without any further hesitation, seemingly unfazed and unafraid, because I knew they hated Slade more than they feared him and they would not be pushed around; they were strong people and I knew that ever since the first time Slade messed with one of their friends (myself or Raven, or Terra, I guess also) they had adopted a coldness toward him that pushed out witty banter and focused mostly on gaining something we had really sworn ourselves against—revenge. That was how much they despised him for what he had done to us but to me mostly and I knew they had my back. The problem was, they had it a little too much for my own good.

Cyborg was instantly jumping in front of me and taking a fighting stance, his guns pointed in Slade's direction. Raven's eyes flashed red and she was already glowing with her energy—and similarly, Starfire was growling with eyes shining energetic green and glowing with her own powers. Most notably Beast Boy was now a lion and was hissing and growling, snarling and roaring at Slade, his eyes too possessed with the hatred for Slade but which I had never seen so obvious and forthcoming before that moment.

"Leave him alone!" Starfire snapped, her fists clenching with that rage as it built. "Do you feel you have not troubled him enough?"

"Trouble?" Slade mused softly and laughed. "I offer Robin no trouble, while you on the contrary have given him more than you can understand."

I saw rage rise in all of them but Beast Boy was the first to act upon it. He sprung at Slade, his green mane fluttering backwards with teeth bared and a loud, frightening roar escaping him. But Slade was too fast for him and before he even saw it coming he was thrown like a rag-doll against the side of one of the buildings where he collapsed and changed back into his normal self.

Raven was noticeably angered by this and her eyes were once again burning; lowly and in a tone that would have chilled any mortal she began to hiss her typical: "Azarath Metrion Zi-," but Slade literally would not hear a moment of it and sent his foot to her mouth, causing her to make a muffled shriek, fall backwards into a building like Beast Boy, ultimately losing her concentration as glass windows shattered around her and covered her.

"I've had enough of that little incantation, Raven," he said, and chuckled. "Hasn't the world? If Terra was good for anything it was calling things like she saw them and you really are a destructive little _witch_."

That shocked Cyborg out of his stunned silence caused by watching Raven be so easily taken down; he sprung at Slade, screaming, "You ain't gonna be talking about Raven that way, you little punk!" He was trying to deliver to Slade what he had to Raven, but Slade amazingly caught his foot midair and flung him effortlessly in the direction of Beast Boy, who was just getting up with a groan. Cyborg crashed into him with a scream and they both were thrown back into the building.

"A punk, eh? Better than a worthless mechanical freak of nature who'd be better off used as scrap metal," Slade said easily, watching in amusement as the two of them lay there moaning in pain, not really sure again what had hit them, their limbs tangled like two pieces of string.

Starfire actually managed to get a hit on him; she flew at him, her eyes burning green and her mouth pulled back in a snarl as she flung her fists into his back at full force and sent him flying into a nearby parked car; but Slade was not so easily defeated and was on his feet in an instant, looking at Starfire without a hint of uneasiness showing in that eye, narrowed however to show annoyance. Starfire was on her feet in a way that suggested she was about to spring upon him and tear him apart with her hands, which were hooked into claws; like someone transformed by their anger she appeared almost to be detached from what she was doing, so far removed that she could have done anything to him that would have calmed her like a monster needing to feed. She was growling loudly almost like Beast Boy had been and I could actually hear her teeth grind as she hissed out, "You. Will not. Treat my friends that way."

Slade crossed his arms and chuckled easily, obviously not threatened in any manner—again amused more than anything. "Really? And what will you do if I do? Pretend you have any strength whatsoever to stop me? I don't think so, girl. You always were the most fantasizing and stupid of them all."

At this Starfire couldn't take it; she flew at him, a blast charged in her hand that was large enough to level the city. I snapped out of it; this haze I had been in of complete shock and just a feeling of helplessness, of not knowing what to do, of feeling so unprepared, and feeling so lost and stupid created a state of frozenness in which I could only watch with wide eyes and take the actions in but could not process them far enough to understand that I should be doing something; should be out helping them and defending them. When I saw this thing she was going to throw at him combined with the look on her face I realized there was something really wrong with her—that her anger, anger at the way Slade was treating the people she cared about and anger at Slade himself, as if the mask was taunting her, had really, and I mean _really_, transformed her into something that was not only unlike her but also frightening and terrible, _deadly_—and that I had to stop it before something bad happened to her as a result—because when it came to Slade little was there a time that _he'd_ be the one taking the damage rather than the attacker. But what was more—that thing wouldn't just hurt her, it would hurt everyone else in the city if she fired it, and I knew it without a doubt.

I screamed at her, "Starfire, _no_!" when I realized I couldn't move my legs which felt as if they were glued down to the pavement. And I thought it wouldn't be enough—thought that that would be the end to the Titans and everyone else in the city, and there would be nothing else but darkness and nothingness. But when I spoke, as if someone had snapped their fingers in her mind to pull her out of a trace, her eyes stopped glowing and she suddenly realized what she was about to do; she halted abruptly with a gasp and the blast dissipated in her hand. And she was looking at Slade with these wide, green eyes and her lip quivering and her body shaking—realizing where she had gone more than anyone else did in that moment and knowing what it meant. The idea frightened her and we could all see it, all felt it. But Slade did not care—chuckling he aimed a thermal blaster at her and fired, sending her flying backward with a shriek. She hit a lamppost and slumped down at its base, her head bleeding and her body bruised.

"Starfire!" I yelled, and ran to her, taking her into my arms. The others were recovered and now by our side instantly, all instantly trying to do whatever they could to help her, though Raven was really the only one who proved useful because she touched her chest and using her powers instantly, and to everybody's amazement, except Slade, who seemed to be amused at the little spectacle more than anything, to heal her. Starfire opened her eyes and groaned. We breathed sighs of relief, and I said instantly, helping her to sit up and supporting her body as she clutched her head lightly, "Are you okay?"

She didn't have a chance to answer before Slade's voice shattered our worlds yet again, chuckling scornfully as he watched us with a narrowed eye, "Such a foolish group. A self-centered witch, a pile of rusty scrap metal, a blubbering little whore and their little dog. Did you really think that the four of you could beat me when you seem so intent on keeping the only skilled member of your little gang out of the fight?"

I pushed Starfire into Raven's arms and stood up; I had had enough of this whole thing—how dirty and personal it had gotten. Since when had Slade been the type to taunt us with insults like these? These weren't the kind of cryptically friendly clues he often offered us or collective words of disdain—these were personal, hateful insults and I knew that he meant every word of them. That wasn't what I had wanted for the Titans and if fighting crime meant having someone treat my friends this way then I wasn't going to have it; if Slade was going to muck it up with insults then it was no longer a playful game but a heated, burning thing that would not be moved on from even if we managed to defeat him. And when it came to my friends that just wasn't going to fly; maybe I was too weak to stop that for myself, but I was not when it came to them and I would not allow myself to be.

"Take that back, you little coward. Stop hiding behind your mask and _take it back_," I said, in the calmest voice I could but like them I could barely control my anger—like Starfire I felt myself losing it.  
"Were it not a waste of your time, Robin, I would invite you to _make me_. But why tire yourself over your worthless little friends? You could still be my apprentice, Robin—you'd do much better fighting these fools than fighting me." The eye looked at me, narrowed, and gleamed.

I heard myself growl, "We'll see about that," before I started to charge at him; lost in a state of hot red anger I, like Starfire, was about ready to rip his face off with my fingernails—because like everyone else he had hit a hot spot for me, just in a different way. Mentioning my apprenticeship with him had sent me off the deep-end like Slade's taunts had Starfire—and from that there was no going back. And I probably would have began to work on prying that mask right from his face had I not been held back by Cyborg and Beast Boy, reminding me vaguely of the time I'd been the Red X and had been stopped by them from chasing Slade out of the confusion. And like then I had been snarling, "Let me go! Let _go!"_

The two of them pulled me back over to where Starfire was now standing beside Raven, looking grimly serious as half the time they gazed at me sympathetically and the other half they eyed Slade with hatred dancing in their eyes like flames and making them shimmer and sparkle.

"Robin!" Cyborg hissed in my ear, trying to be as quiet as possible though of course Slade was listening—always was. "If you fight Slade you're gonna destroy the city! You're too emotional about this guy! You gotta let it go!"

I was, to put it frankly, in disbelief. "Are you kidding me?" I screamed, not caring if Slade heard. "I'm trying to help you guys because you obviously can't help yourselves! And since when am I the only emotional one? What happened to Starfire's blast, huh? _That _almost destroyed the city, not me!"

And though my words were hurtful the only one fazed by them was Starfire, though I wouldn't take much notice because I was mainly focused on the two of them holding me and the girl in front of me, who quietly tried to placate me. "Robin, this is what Slade wants to happen with you. He wants to make you weak and whether you like it or not, you let him. So there's no point in you fighting."

Again, I was dismayed. And again, I barked at them loudly, not caring and not really thinking, reacting instinctively and truthfully, "_I'm_ not the weak one! You're all weak for not trusting me! If you would give me a chance—!"

"Robin, you gotta stop!" Beast Boy cut me off, looking at me with eyes that weren't hard but which were frightened and sympathetic and saddened all at once. "Slade gets under all our skins but he really gets to you! You can't do this to yourself! We just don't want you to lose it!"

I opened my mouth to speak but Cyborg added in, silencing me as he put a hand on my shoulder, "We do trust you, man, but you gotta sit this one out. You're not yourself when it comes to Slade and we just don't want anything to happen. But we got this covered. We can take him." Beast Boy nodded at this, and Raven chimed in quickly as if to keep me from speaking any further so that I wouldn't be able to protest, "You'd be better off going to fight Cinderblock. He's still out there and people are getting hurt, and someone has to go. It might as well be you."

Cyborg and Beast Boy nodded and when I looked to Starfire I saw that she was nodding, if reluctantly and sadly. And I have to say I was feeling a little more than just patronized; I was feeling betrayed and diminished, controlled and unimportant. For the first time in a long time I wanted to grab their shoulders and shake them and say _how stupid are you? _if not just blatantly attack them. In a word I was infuriated and a part of me, one stronger and more dominant than the others in my decision making, had suddenly decided that if they wanted so badly to fight Slade alone and lose then fine; if they were so confident in their abilities then they could just deal with him and I wouldn't worry about it either way. In fact I just didn't care as I was ripping myself out of their grip and heading to my motorcycle; for the smallest instant, I hated every last one of them and would have preferred Slade to win—as if I'd been slapped so hard by their hand of betrayal that my whole presence of thinking had shifted. And maybe it had—because for a fraction of a second I didn't care if I never saw them again.

And that, ultimately, was my biggest mistake.

"Fine," I remember hissing as I got on the seat and started the engine. "Go ahead and fight him but don't bother me when he's beating you into the dirt."

They were stunned and speechless, in disbelief, shock, probably betrayal, but I didn't care (I would have noticed Starfire's face in particular, with wide eyes that looked as if they were a window into her soul, portraying a broken heart)—and I was about to demonstrate that by driving off when Slade said easily, the eye twinkling gently, "Don't worry, Robin—I will have them taken care of and I will see you soon enough. We will talk then."

I didn't give him the satisfaction of an answer and rode away past him, and he didn't stop me.

"Strange how a smart boy like you would surround themselves with such foolish people," Slade said now, cleaning my neck with a cotton ball soaked in some solution of what I didn't know. I would have squirmed if I could but still weighed down by the blanket, I could only twist my head away from his hand, of course accomplishing nothing and making my neck stiff and in pain. Noticing Slade pulled another leather strap out from beneath the table and put it across my forehead, and another over my chin so I couldn't move my head around any longer, making me cry out in frustration and clench my teeth, feeling helpless and on the verge of tears for the first time in what felt like forever. I felt my eyes water as Slade lifted my mask off my eyes and then calmly wiped away the tears with the backs of his fingers, even when I tried to keep them shut so that he would not be able to see my face in its entirety; but he seemed not to pay much regard to it and soon resumed cleaning a spot on my neck which I was becoming increasingly aware a needle would be inserted. As he did so, he commented, "It's odd how often I've noticed you'd be better off without them. It seems their stupidity has no bounds. Why would I let you wander off when you are the object of my intentions?"

I would learn later when I arrived at the site of Cinderblock's rampage that the Slade they had been fighting was actually a robot—just another decoy, set to lure me away from them. Slade had been waiting at the docks and had made himself present after I had destroyed Cinderblock in my rage still burning at how I'd just been betrayed. His plan was simple and it should have been obvious—Slade knew that we expected him to show up whenever Cinderblock was present and he knew they weren't keen on letting me be alone with Slade like they were my parents; he knew that if he made them think _Slade_ was taken care of, I would be okay and they wouldn't worry about splitting up. And I don't think I was surprised, actually, when I saw him standing there, watching me with that narrowed glinting eye—I wasn't surprised that Slade had one-uped us again and that we had totally fallen prey to his trap. I should have been, but I wasn't.

"Such fools—poor Robin, relax," he said, and wiped my eyes again, gently, surprisingly so, in this controlled, delicate way that I would never have expected out of someone like Slade who only seemed to know harshness. "I promise this will not hurt. It's just a little injection and you won't feel a thing."

"What are you going to do?" was all I managed to say—even though there was so much I wanted to say, so many thoughts whirling around my head like a tornado.

"Simple." He lifted the needle and tapped it gently with one finger while the eye gleamed and glistened in the low light, staring at me intently. "An antidote, Robin. I'm going to make you mine again."


	2. The Youth

A cool wind swept through my hair as I rode down the nearly deserted streets of the city that night; now dark, there was a chill about the air that seemed to totally replace any heat of the hot red sinking sun I'd been so fixated with no more than a half hour earlier. The lights around were barely neon and seemed, like the rest of the city, to be diluted, as if too tired to continue to provide their usually upbeat glow. The docks were even more so like this; absolutely deserted with the only light being that cast from a solitary lamppost. I had had a feeling of being totally and internally chilled—felt nothing more than the solitary urge to go back to Titan's tower and to curl up in a ball on the couch and watch a movie. But then, at the same time, I didn't, not really, because the idea of sleeping or even just sitting in the tower while life progressed without me outside was on the verge of being suffocating. In a lot of ways, I felt buried alive; and going home tonight would be like being buried in a coffin while Slade fought my friends above me. That's probably irrational of me—to have two very split and different opinions and desires—but so is human nature itself. And for the first time that night I was beginning to understand how ill-fitted I was with a group who couldn't understand those kinds of feelings—beings who may act human enough but at the heart of it were all driven by some alien, possessed, or half-mechanical mind that could never grip just what I was feeling.

Remembering my friends made me want to stay up—made me wish I couldn't sleep and wasn't tired or cold or human—because in all reality I wanted to be like them, to not think differently, to blend in. Little did I know this would just be the first of many thoughts to follow of the same nature—the doubtful, angry nature I adapted when I remembered my friends and the way they had left me the last time I saw them, and which would become increasingly darker as time increased. But that night I was enveloped by a sadness that derived from this feeling of betrayal making my body buzz with the need to _do_ something; something, as long as I was not sitting in the tower with the idea bouncing around in my mind that my friends were out doing my job and acting like my parents as if they were any older or wiser or stronger, for that matter, than myself. And to be honest I was very angry—angry enough to be desiring things I had never even conceived myself wanting, not in my years since becoming a crime-fighter. True I had never hated the idea of revenge but that night I was feeling something much more sinister, much more like the villain I was trying so hard to rebel against; I wanted destruction, to destroy something and make it feel the pain of that, to feel control. I wanted to play the game Slade played with me and convinced me I played all the time and dreamed about with someone else; wanted to build someone up and tear them down mercilessly and drink that in like it gave me a strange high. In fact I was so angry that I don't think it would be inaccurate to say I would have wanted to do that to one of them, like they had to me…

Cinderblock was an enemy I was very happy to see that night; a villain that doesn't think much and that isn't human enough for me to really regard whether or not I harm. Maybe that was part of Slade's plan, too, maybe trying to at least calm me down now that he had me where he wanted me, to placate me with the medicating of beating something almost inanimate the way he knew _I liked_. And that was one time I more than ever needed a punching bag; because I was feeling so full of emotions that I was sure if I didn't find some release I would eventually and quickly explode. I can't even describe the feeling, actually, besides a quickly building energy within me that puzzled me; an odd invigorating high-like buzzing that was making me feel so alive and so much more human, and so simultaneously increasing that rage and therefore that energy. A vicious circle that would continue until it leaked out of my body; like human pleasure sleep, relaxation, would not come until I had release. And that was what the pile of rocks became that night to me, as I destroyed him—actually destroyed him—after spending almost ten straight minutes just kicking and punching and hitting him around carelessly and hatefully. He stood no chance but that night, in that moment, I had forgotten about the city and was now doing it solely for myself; even if he would have been ready to cart off to jail maybe thirty seconds after I'd begun, I wasn't going to stop. That night I forgot about the ungrateful citizens and the police and my protocol, morals, and did what I could for myself. I destroyed the block of cement, breaking him into multiple pieces. If he counts as a person, then it was the first time I had killed someone.

All while Slade watched.

That night I didn't think much about I had done, because even after I had done what I had done I was engulfed in what felt like a heated red rage and mostly I lingered in that haze while I calmed down—and I didn't think about anything but how that feeling felt as it gently dissolved away, slowly, inoffensively, felt my breath slow easily and begin to flow like steady but storm-stirred ocean waves. To calm down entirely it took maybe five minutes, but when I was I didn't stay in that spot of composure more than a few seconds however because when I turned around to go back to my motorcycle I saw a sight that always made my heart race, made my body tense and my mind spin, made me feel amazingly angry and frustrated and helpless but at the same time so in control and confident and alive and _happy_ to be alive, excited to see what would happen next and what was in store for me—all with a gentle lightness about it that perplexed but pleased me ultimately. This was what was done for me;

And when I saw Slade leaning easily against my motorcycle with arms crossed, I felt no different. Briefly, if the night had not progressed as it had and I'd had no experience or knowledge of the past, I would have thought it was the good old days all over again; I would have been sure Slade and I had some odd business here, he with some plan to make me his unwilling apprentice and I to stupidly fall into that trap. Or maybe we were shrouded in the glow of light cast by the billboard on the roof where I would have one of the oddest but strangely most comforting, if one could say that about something of the nature, confrontation with Slade. And I would wonder internally without alerting myself because to do so would cause too much emotional strife what strange adventure Slade had for me today; what would I be able to spectate easily like earlier that night as they fought but he'd had no intention to touch me while they'd have to anticipate and defeat. Perpetuated by that idea that I know seems odd but is something I'm totally confident about—Slade would not kill me; everyone believed signs pointed to danger in Slade, what worried my friends, that I would snap and get myself killed by over-estimating my abilities and losing control of everything as anger took hold. But I knew…and Slade knew, too—this bond the two of us had furthered—that on the most basic of levels if we didn't have each other life would dissolve and fade into this little unsatisfying, hull of its former self. And I had tried it—tried him, and he hadn't. I'd been pushed into an unwilling session where that would be realized—but only there. When the lights were on I was still alive, and yet here in _this_ darkness he wouldn't kill me.

And he hadn't.

Knowing this at that time I remember thinking very briefly something along the lines that if I needed to yell uncle, I should. In this darkness he'd stop—and even though we'd been away from one another so long I could still sense this in him. I could see it gleaming in his eye and even though I _was_, I wasn't afraid.

I stayed unafraid—but I came out of that vintage-y haze soon enough and felt the waves beginning to crash frantically again; I felt the emotions boiling in me and felt myself light up with aliveness and present-ness but more than anything, hot white anger, burning, making me clench my teeth and fists and ground right back into a fighting stance. Again, a totally natural and uncalculated reaction—so natural it involved little thought because for a moment that haze enveloped everything and commanded my attention on the enemy himself and nothing else. But quickly I was beginning to come to my senses and chase thought patterns like I was doing constantly, the team's detective—suddenly, like in any of the movies Beast Boy made us watch, I was having a _wait, if you're here, and I'm here…_except I was thinking—wait, if Slade's here, then who are my friends fighting?—if he's here, then _where are my friends?_

"Excellent, Robin," he said softly, the eye as typically gleaming at me in that low light but in that one moment it seemed to glow like a hungry cat's as it spots its prey and gets ready to pounce. Right away I noticed again he was using that tone. "You continue to improve and to impress me. And to think that your friends were so intent on keeping that skill from me."

"Where are they?" Again, the uncalculated growl slipped out of my mouth easily; propelled by the way he was talking to me, the praises that seemed to further tease and weaken me while building up his ego and muscles all the more all the while. I was dimly aware how my fists were clenched so tightly that my nails dug into my palm, but even so I was too enraged to notice, really; and yet Slade was all too observant.

"Relax, Robin. There's no need to—" he began to say gently, but I wouldn't hear a minute of it, so angry that I was seeing red and growling like a mad dog; I did something two years ago I might not have had the balls to do when it came to someone like Slade—rather than try to keep the wild side of me from surfacing to preserve what that side _wouldn't_ do, I charged at him; I had charged at him before, many times, but something was distinctly different this time. The animalistic side of me that I couldn't keep from being unleashed was in control and was more than just concerned with bringing Slade down; it was so unconcerned with morals and the like that it would have done anything it needed to to accomplish the goal and it wouldn't have regretted having to do anything viewed as dissolute to the normal Robin. But more than anything else this Robin was so _attached _to the goal itself that emotions got in the way and did what they wanted; in a word what I did was aggravated—because I know Slade wasn't expecting me to pounce on him and to claw at him while shrieking like an angry animal, like something Beast Boy might have done to take down a foe bigger than himself. And to be honest I wasn't expecting myself to do it either, and yet here I was; where the aggravation came in, the fact that in the back of my mind I wanted nothing more than to gouge out his eye with dirty fingernails and to drive my knee into his crotch; to tear out his hair in handfuls and to rip his limbs apart. A part of me wanted to see him suffer and to watch him die slowly, to hear him moan as if in doing so he was apologizing for all he'd ever done to me. I wanted to do those things and laugh at him; I'd laugh as he took his last breaths and I'd go home and laugh and when they buried him I'd spit on his grave and years later when I was successful and everyone had moved on I would be the only one who thought of him, but the same person who visited the grave again and pissed on it in a winter's snow. And that was the part of me that only surfaced in his presence—yet was only one of many hidden and deep emotions. This, though, the first to be acted upon. Evil—revenge, betrayal, destruction. The things that encompassed us were seemingly only brought upon by the other so as to make a combination that was fearful but beautiful at the same time—and strangely really desirable. Because in that moment, though it was void of anything I'd ever taught and lectured myself—to be as removed from criminals as possible and to keep our fights impersonal—I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it;

A little punk named Robin who was crazy enough to literally tackle a criminal like Slade, to try to wrestle him even though he was twice his size and twice his strength—a confident rebel who would be worshipped among other rebels and respected whether or not he was successful. People whispered his name throughout the streets. But what was more Slade sat in his throne on lonely nights and thought about Robin—wondered what went through his mind and realized how _awesome_ he was—at least, this is what I imagined happening and it pleased me so much I was that much more encouraged to continue the attack no matter how illogical and stupid it may be. Like the good old days, the fueling of our adventures and what it might bring, the connection between us and the bond that would never be broken, lasting into eternity, I wanted him to think about me. To wonder.

I wanted to influence our history but what was more—tonight I wanted to live it. In that moment, I wanted to engage with Slade and I wanted to feel whatever came of that, no matter how dumb and irrational it might be. Oddly—what I did made me feel alive and happy to be alive, and at the same time those feelings fueled what I did. A strange, never-ending circle. But isn't life sometimes?

I was hanging onto him like a cat with claws out, stuck to the shirt of its owner—and notice this perfect metaphor, which I would and would think about in the days to come—and kicking and hitting him, howling equally as madly. In truth though I know what possessed me and know that there was little I could have done in that exact enraged moment I first saw him to stop it, or if I even should have, I don't exactly remember what happened in that moment—furthering my belief that that side of me is like a beast lurking within, and when it emerges it takes on its own persona, becoming another person, shutting the friendly and known half down until it's done and leaving it none the wiser. Like any of Beast Boy's various transformations. But I remember that—hanging onto him like he was my lifeline in a monster-filled sea, and I remember how initially he was totally caught off guard—something I never would have expected from someone like Slade. When I first pounced on him he hadn't been expecting it because if he had he would have been prepared enough to defend himself—to knock me back with a swift kick to the stomach or the like; but mostly I remember how the eye had widened briefly as I came at him and grabbed onto him; he had stumbled backward, his hands instinctively going to his face where I was apparently scratching at his mask (though again I don't totally remember), trying to pry me off. _This_, I thought in the back of my mind, not caring much about it as it surfaced but dimly noting it, _was what would have happened back there had those two _jerks_ not held me back—and now Slade knows, too._

I hadn't even begun to think that this was a different Slade—the _real_ Slade.

And because this was the real Slade (even though I didn't know at the time) I was seeing a really raw and unedited reaction from him—something to let me know that underneath all that metal and coldness he was human and there was a beating heart that would jump and race like anyone else's. To recoil and stagger backward and to make sounds of surprise—this, a human reaction. Strangely it was comforting—as if to alert me that the two of us were on the same wavelength when it came to emotions, that, that night, the two of us had progressed away from the oldest values of trying so hard to put up masks for the surroundings, to charade for my friends so that they only saw what we wanted them to and never had any idea about this communication silently progressing between us. As if tonight it was just the two of us and nothing else; and we didn't have to be afraid to act the way we would because they were not there to judge us. This thought was maybe too complex—an idea certainly the old Robin wouldn't have even begun to consider, not even the brooding "Red X" offshoot of my thoughts. Because in a perfect world I shouldn't have found any comfort in knowing my enemy was human—human and just like me. Because that made it that much harder when there was so much being expected of me;

To save the city—to save my friends…

But in all reality, I did.

I came out of my haze maybe the minute I noticed he had regained his composure and pulled me off of him and was holding me still against his chest with one arm beneath mine and the other at my throat, wrapping me in a tight and painful embrace. I didn't know, really, how I'd ended up in this position (vaguely I recall my attack on him only being halted when he'd kneed me in the stomach and then grabbed me just as I fell, because there was a dull thudding there making me feel sick and hungry and horribly damaged) but I can attest that in that moment I was thinking back to our last fight when I'd been his apprentice, when he had grabbed me and had held me like this. I don't know what he would have done if I had not kicked him then; and I was not about to find out now, because out of the corner of my eye I noticed a long, glistening needle glinting in the low light on the docks that night, its so-called beauty only diminished by the determined shining of Slade's eye. He was moving it towards my neck and the minute I saw it I panicked—because the combination of ideas, Slade and a long needle with a strange liquid, really did not mix well. In the briefest of moments all the possibilities of what this would mean for me flashed before my eyes—gruesome images that made me want to curl up into a ball and close my eyes and never open them again, made me long for comfort. In hindsight none of them were very realistic but probably more just the result of the fight-or-flight, thoughtless Robin who reacted only based on instinct, but they were enough to influence what I did—and this is where I begin to wish I didn't act based upon instinct;

I grabbed at the needle instantly, totally without thinking; but the minute I saw the needle I was determined to stop it from reaching its destination of choice and my hands were not totally restrained by Slade because the arm he had had on my neck was holding the needle and his grip on me was no longer as acute and unable to be struggled out of—so there was absolutely nothing to stop me from just _grabbing _it. Similarly when I get into "battles" with criminals and I see a knife coming my way, sometimes the first impulse is to just grab it and on any other night I would have been able to stop myself; but that night with so many emotions flying around and being acted upon who even could guess if my thinking was half sane enough to do something like that? Either way it didn't matter; in the end I grabbed the needle and screamed as if felt it plunge into my hand, which, even though was gloved, provided little resistance to the needle as it penetrated the flesh there. For the first time since he died, I think, I heard him gasp and I felt him remove the needle quickly from my hand, and he dropped me, probably in surprise or shock or some other emotion I would have been more interested in had my hand not been aching with this odd new sensation I felt there; dimly, I noticed how there was an odd emptiness enveloping the spot he'd put the needle, accompanied by seeping wetness, a warm, sticky liquid staining my glove dark purple, but more than anything I realized there was little pain after the initial injection—in fact, numbness being the main feeling there.

Slade dropped to his knees beside me, where I was grasping my hand and sitting there in this shocked, dazed silence, most likely pushed there by this sensation which had overloaded everything else and made any thought or action now completely impossible, only replaced by a fuzzy gray screen in front of my eyes. So I was barely aware as he took the injured hand and began slowly removing the glove, which I did not feel entirely, the whole arm seeming to tingle now after just a few moments of lingering in this weird aftermath of the needle. He began to look the hand over, handling it seemingly gently, though I couldn't feel, as he wiped the blood and this clear liquid mingling with it, maybe the liquid in the needle, away with my glove.

"Robin," he scolded, but not loudly or enough to really upset me, with seriousness and this odd concern I wouldn't really think much about just then more than anything else, "I don't _intend _to hurt you—I was just going to give you a little anesthetic. But your struggling could have hit an artery and killed you."

It was only when he touched the forearm of the arm that had not been pierced that I snapped out of my stunned haze, though I still could not feel anything in that arm; he was helping me up from off the ground in this odd, almost fatherly way—not overly motherly, not cradling me in his arms and kissing my injury, but simply touching me, as if to reassure me that he was there, and would take care of me, and that things were, in fact, fine. Any other night I might have thought about this—thought about all it meant and decided how I wanted to apply it to my life and everything I knew; but with a hole in my hand and growing increasingly numb (the numbness was spreading swiftly from my arm and to the adjoining parts of the body, stiffening them), and with my brain at full capacity for thoughts or analyzing them, I was now running solely off instincts because it was all I could afford to do, all my body and mind could take. The anger, frustration, confusion, hatred, uncertainty, happiness, comfort, euphoria, wonder, pain, and the feeling of glad familiarity—had all created this storm that had literally shut down my brain and left it only to zombie-like defenses because there was nothing else I could do;

And again instincts were not friendly to me because instantly, no matter the soft touch he was providing, the strange but fatherly comfort, I found myself driving the good, still receptive fist into his stomach, sending him flying backwards and into a stack of crates that was stacked on the pier near the edge of the boardwalk, close to the water. Some of the crates spilled into the bay and broke open, releasing their contents into the water; Slade, however, was fast enough to recover in time before being drown with them, and slid across the dock until he came to a halt at the very edge of the boardwalk, with his toe just touching the planks of wood. His fists were clenched and again, his eye caught my attention, glowing, like a beacon in blackness, narrowed at me, to suggest extreme displeasure—a infuriation at my arrogance in the face of his kindness, reminding me had I been thinking of when he'd looked upon me after I infected myself with the probes and he had been shaking in rage, ready to kick me with the force of all that anger. If I were to consider myself lucky this time, it would be for the fact he seemed more in control—as if there was no rage to be spent at my expense, as if he'd moved past being angry at my insolence.

"Dangerous behavior, Robin," he said, and again my mind was cutting to memories of the past, this, a faraway dream that seemed like forever ago and preluded one of the strangest events in our history, a memorable chapter because from then on I would never be the same little deluded Robin again, who sincerely believed that if I just trusted in the _power of friendship _I would be okay—knowing from then on that I had narrowly escaped Slade but knowing more seriously that I would never escape him and that even if I never saw him again I would always have the memory of that time with him, doing what I had sworn never to do. From then on I would be brooding ideas of my falsified past and when Terra came around, I was still sore, tender and bitter enough to care. That voice and that sentence brought uncalculated rage to my mind and I started to shake; the fists, both drawn into a clench and my feet swinging back into a fighting stance once again;

He was speaking again, but I wouldn't listen.

"You'd be best not to attack the person responsible for you after that anesthetic has put you to sleep."

I growled, and without a moment's hesitation, I charged at him again, shrieking out my anger even though I was becoming considerably weaker because of this sedative which, even having been administered wrong, was still making its way into my body and making me feel slow and sluggish. As a result, when I came at him, this time, having anticipated it, he easily grabbed my arm and twisted it behind my back; with a screech of pain, I found myself bound here by his strong grip, unrelenting on the "good" hand which was becoming swiftly numbed and even more so by this pressure. Again, my mind burned with a memory of Slade; dimly I was remembering the way he had attached the thermal blaster to the hand he had twisted and at the same time insinuating that in time I'd think of him as a father. What he was doing therefore was excruciatingly painful, on so many levels; not only was I dealing with the physical agony but also the emotional turmoil and stress and cold nostalgia which all just seemed to propel the pain of his hand even further. And the instinctual wrath of that came out full force as I began to kick and punch and struggle with everything in me; I was putting all my weight and strength on him even though the real Robin, the educated and thoughtful Robin would have pleaded with me to stop and to formulate a plan and to stop being so _stupid _had I been in that state of mind. But what to me was an anomaly of everything I had was to Slade a tantrum which was easily quelled with his still undamaged strength and another dose of anesthetics, these this time successfully in my neck because this time I'd been too weak to protest as he held my hands down during the administration. And after this the fire in me was dead and I was totally, completely drained of everything; I began to collapse and dimly I thought I would fall and crash onto the wooden boards of the pier and that would be the last I saw of light for a while—but to my surprise, again indistinct, Slade caught me and held me there in that same fatherly way he had before. Supporting and apparent without being overbearing.

I must have looked distraught, is all I can infer from Slade's reaction: brushing the hair off my forehead where it had been plastered with my sweat from my struggling and then smoothing it back and down presumably to restore some order to it, if it had ever had any, he said gently, in again an uncharacteristic gentleness that my mind wouldn't have had half the capacity to comprehend had I even tried, "Relax, Robin. I have no intent to hurt you. I never have."

"Where…are…they…?" It was all I was capable of mumbling as I drifted into the unwilling sleep, because of the things circulating my mind it would not leave and quickly became the only thing I thought about in those last moments. "Where…are…_they_…?"

"With my robot duplicate, I assume. Unless it's killed them. Silly they should think I would let _you_ wander off…"

The needle would appear in my dreams that night. It would linger and it would not leave, and even after sleep was gone it would remain. My fate, delivered by the white gleam of the needle.

"An _antidote_?" I barked out, staring up at him with wide, panicked eyes—forgetting in the wake of this revelation that he had removed my mask and my eyes were in full view of him—to further his arsenal of information. Though honestly it would not surprise me if he had already studied up on me enough to know everything about me, because in the coming days he would make it painfully clear with each new expansion of past ideas that I really had been the object of his intent all along. But what was more in that moment it didn't really matter whether or not he saw my eyes, even if I failed to notice; because my mind had enough to be concerned about with the idea of an antidote—something I already had a clear enough and horrified knowledge of its purpose. And yet in denial I wanted to believe this was all a dream—I would wake up in the tower in my old bed and realize that Slade hadn't bothered us in years and there was nothing to worry about…

"Yes, Robin," he said, and looked at the needle thoughtfully. "You didn't really think your little friend's birthday would be the last time you saw me, did you?"

"I was hoping it'd be the last time," I spat hatefully, squirming away from his hand as he slowly lowered the needle down to my neck; and when I noticed I felt panic rising and a lump forming in my throat, my body becoming rigid with fear and hot from anticipation and sickened from horror. Though the only time I had called uncle with Slade was in my delusion, when I had _thought_ he was real, the needle and its consequences terrified me and I barked out, wildly, "Slade, _stop!_"

The other hand came down, this one free of sharp, damning objects, and went to touch my forehead, again playing a little with the hair, sweeping it back behind my ear and smoothing the whole mop so it became a little more kempt; this, a new habit I was beginning to despise. I did not like my hair being touched, let alone by Slade, and the motion itself did more to confuse and disturb me than to relax me, if that was what he was trying to do, I did not know. And because I couldn't really understand what it meant or what he was trying to do I didn't know how to react and therefore I was left feeling pretty weak and misplaced; like a fish out of water as I just lay there on the table, trying to squirm out of his grip as he touched my face and the ever important exposed eyes, probably further instilling him with power and weakening myself as I made my helplessness ever apparent. But I didn't know what to do—after all, since when had any enemy had any contact with my face other than a foot or a fist?

At least he wouldn't taunt me today with this; again, it seemed past him. "Relax, Robin," he said softly, the eye gleaming as he looked at me intently, "It won't hurt. Just a small injection and it will only take a few minutes. It's quite simple, actually—quite impressive. See," he held up the needle and indicated to the liquid inside, "inside are nanoscopic probes, like the ones inside your body now. Except, I built these to deactivate the harmful probes. It will be done quickly and you won't feel a thing; and after the harmful probes are removed you will have these inside your body, which can be used to regenerate your health and heal your wounds should you be injured in the future. So we can have you young and healthy for a long time."

The eye gleamed.

My mind was quickly receding back to that state of disarray, ripped apart by a tornado of cruel thoughts and vying emotions. And yet outstanding from these were strong and conscious, "real Robin" thoughts, calculated and attentive, without deception or initial shock. These thoughts were considerate of the past and were quickly recognizing problems with Slade's theory—and like the old Robin, the foolish, _real Robin_, it used each of these as validation for its own actions, as a way to avoid the truth and build up a false but safe and pleasant reality to exist in, yet without any recognition of the meaning of a coward. Simply, feeling "smart" stroked my confidence and made me feel strong enough to confront the subject with a tight hold to whatever conclusion I'd come to even if it wasn't correct. In the end, it was all a sad struggle to justify my ego, to avoid ideas of delusion and truth and to be able to distance myself from what I actually was. The old-young Robin was a fool and I hated him, but he reared his head more than I could control or would have liked.

_He_ declared confidently: "But we _removed_ the probes! Even if you _could _create technology like that, there isn't anything you have to use it on anymore. Cyborg even took the generator!" I thought I had him, but;

The eye narrowed and gleamed. "You think you can _remove _the probes? Nanoscopic probes?" I heard a chuckle from beneath the iron mask. "Poor delusioned boy, there are millions of them—_trillions. _No matter what technology your little scrap-metal friend has, nothing can remove probes on a nanoscopic level once they have attached to the patient's signature and become encoded in the DNA. Not, unless of course, you have the original software the probes were created with which to form an antidote."

I looked at him, stunned. "But Cyborg said—"

"Robin, your friend does not know as much as you and he think he does. I _built _the probes to trick his systems because I made them in _accordance _to their signatures. He can remove the base probes on any of you but no matter what, the active chemical will be encoded into the DNA which is something he can't reverse. And because I used coded software the traces of nanoscopic elements will not alert him to any changes in DNA structure or health condition; in fact, I had a feeling they would catch on after your little incident at Wayne Enterprises and so I decided to do some…wireless updates to ensure that if they did discover the probes it would be virtually impossible to remove them—and as an added bonus they would remain undetected again until you disobeyed. But of course I didn't count on the little stunt you pulled—though I will admit, you surprised and impressed me with your confidence, Robin.

As for the generator of the power, well—it would have been helpful to have had the original your friend stole. But I managed. When I came here after being brought back, I traced the probes' signatures and downloaded the information back into the mainframe and then pulled the logistics of the generator from that—working backwards, in a way. And yet the benefit of all the hassle is that because the probes have become specialized to the subject's DNA, we can further minimize the risk that you will be re-infected with the virus because your signature was never re-encoded. Meaning that if you were ever to get your little hands on the generator you would not be able to infect yourself with the probes again—meaning you can't pull a stunt similar to last time."

I thought I had him—though at the same time I think I knew I didn't. There was a part to the real Robin, a great part which was very critical of every move and thought; sometimes that was bad, but sometimes it saved lives, too. That part was now recognizing that someone like Slade would not have gone through all the trouble to create such an intricate device like these "good probes" he talked about just to realize they were useless. He would have thought it out better and certainly, he wouldn't have spent three years away from me if he hadn't been doing some serious thinking and planning. I was kicking myself now—because even if I had been anticipating Slade, why hadn't I done anything about it? Even if I wanted to interact with him again why did I just sit back and wait for him to come up with something like this? Because certainly this was not what I wanted and I should have known—this was not what came to mind particularly, when I thought of the good old days and the light and warmth that brought me. I should have known that nothing good would come of Slade and I should have just stayed away from him and done what I knew was right; because when it came to Slade it was similar to meddling in the occult—it was just better to stay away than to dabble and end up regretting later what would come of it. This, what had happened to me, should have been no surprise—but in reality and in all bluntness it never should have happened. Slade may be a tempter—he might provide me with things that felt good—but in the end he was little more than the face of the devil himself and I should have known better than to allow myself to fall victim to the petty pleasure it gave me to do so. And the fact was now—now I wasn't the only one being affected by my stupidity, arrogance, and selfishness. Now there were others—now, once again, people's lives were at risk because of me and there was not a thing I could do about it. And now—it was no longer a question of whether or not I'd ever been in control: the fact is it's a certainty that I was never holding the cards because if I'd ever had the chance I blew it or second guessed myself or acted impulsively or let emotions take hold of me. I was weak, stupid, and I was the worst thing that happened to the city, and in that moment, I sincerely believed it. My friends would have been better off if I had killed myself years ago.

A few minutes of silence from my part—just me laying there, staring up at the lamp illuminating me, drowning in this overwhelming sense of my failure and the sudden idea that my life had been a lie and a waste of everyone's time. I didn't realize I had started crying again until I felt him wiping my eyes with his gloved hands. Again, they were strong and confident but gentle and controlled, and now I could feel them, and I didn't know if that was a good or a bad thing. Strangely laying there weeping with my mortal enemy standing in front of me and looking down at me and holding that long, sparkling needle while I was completely helpless gave me this crazy sense of being so _alive_, and that made me want to fight. The feeling of being alive instilled me with this desire to make things right and to do what was right and to fight in the name of goodness; in fact the thought itself that I would be better off dead made me feel completely relevant and present, actually made me want that much more to be _allowed _to be alive, to be justified to be alive, and then to have the chance to turn it all around and prosper. As if I wanted to prove fate wrong and to prove myself wrong and to prove Slade wrong—as if proving these forces wrong could only be done with persistence and confidence and undying devotion to my cause and to goodness even if it was at the expense of my friends. And yet I knew that that was crazy and pointless and wrong, still it seemed to be the only thing tying me to this world anymore—establishing a consistency that, if everything else, couldn't be torn from me. I would take this to the grave and that would be my vindication and defense when it all came down to it, no matter what I ended up doing.

As if, if I didn't bring back the old Robin who was the champion of stupid questions and inappropriate over-confidence, insistence and one-track mindedness, then no longer could I call myself a Teen Titan.

Maybe that was what we were about—consistency without quality.

Or maybe it was just me.

"I don't believe you!" I sneered, crying harder though unable to help it and really not taking much notice to it, helplessly turning my head away from his hand so that I did not have to feel that confusing touch. "I don't believe this is true! You're lying! You're lying to get me to obey you! You're—"

I felt the sharpness—a gentle and quick pinch of my skin and then a little pain spreading from the area on my neck. Then Slade took a cloth and wiped down the area as it began to bleed, disinfecting it with a solution that stung slightly before bandaging it. He removed the blanket and then released the locks on the straps retaining me and helped me to sit up. I sat there in his arms, quiet and dazed.

After a few minutes he took the hand which had been impaled by the needle in his and caressed it, gently, bringing it up to my eyelevel. "Look, Robin," he said, his voice projecting the smile that must have been on his face.

I looked dizzily at the hand, and even in my stunned haze I could see that where there had once been a painful, bloody hole, there was now smooth, young skin. Like new.


	3. Beauty and A Beast

His first "fort." The turning cogs and gears that had haunted my nightmares for years after our first and final encounter there—and which would be the setting for my unpleasant high where Slade had seemed anything but false, a hallucination of my troubled mind. Now they were turning once again and clicking and interlocking in this eerie way, which somehow proved soothing in the deepest reaches of my mind but would be overpowered by the horrifying fear that came into my body and crept up my spine and into my throat, pushing a scream up with it. There was the terror of this place—_our_ place, where now memories of his odd and fatherly promise to me were mixed with haunted memories of my past, pain, and my eminent death. Once again though he wasn't touching me I felt that pain, felt him kicking me and hitting me to my death; felt the undying fear of those last moments—the suffocating knowledge that my life would end there in that darkened place by a darker figure in a darker light. The basement of the tower and this place became intertwined and no longer did I recognize safety from danger or the other way around; that darkness and the cogs and the eminent sound echoing in my brain were enough to draw horrified shrieks of terror; as if, all at once, I saw that dark Slade which would kill me and the Slade obsessed with a stupid girl named Terra, saw the knowing, stylish and confident and sly grin of the old man as he held me against the tree and made me think for a moment that'd be it, saw the terror and conquering-obsessed corpse who would stop at nothing to regain his skin, all as one, when I heard that sound, and it reduced my body to rapid shaking and fast breathing, convulsions and gasps of a dying man in a deep murky pool of liquid. The now beautiful and young hand grasped my heart and my mouth fell open; I was sure in that moment I would die, the cardiac rhythm mimicking that which I'd had that dark, rainy night at Titan Tower, sure the stress on my heart of the suffocating nostalgia would finish me off once and for all. The other reached out, groping, for what I did not know, though it seemed in that moment of weakness all I could do to imitate control.

That hand was met with another—Slade's, the strong and confident and practiced hand. His other went around to my back, providing support as he made me sit up as I began to lower backward no matter how I struggled to hold myself up there. Of course the touch did absolutely nothing to calm me, filling what space was left in my mind with thoughts of eminent pain and death and horror, red hot rage and cool, dark and gray, fading and crumbling memories and a feeling of unavoidable passing. Darkness all around, I felt trapped in a "bad era" where things were new and exciting but dark and sinful and in that respect with tainted lust. That high I'd had had made what was once a gentle expulsion of cooped up emotions between Slade and I a knife slicing into an infected wound, pain, suffering. The hand moved to the time of the cogs and gears and when it touched me it infected me with its creeping blackness; and without any other thought I shrieked out that feeling like it was all that could be done to save my soul, as if, to try and revoke that blackness as he pumped it into me. It was arduous and breathtaking and horrible—but again it made me feel alive, and so I shrieked further. The endless circle was returning and I would do nothing to stop it.

Those shrieks were quickly intertwined with words of the other—that person who I knew completed me. Slade's voice, drawn out of its calm softness by alarm at my state, was melding swiftly into mine, almost becoming one; where his heart beat at a rhythm as fast as mine as he too, recognized the horrid creeping darkness at his unwanted touch. I could feel that in him—that longing for what I longed, and there our voices seemed again to be perpetuated, even if just to me. He was yelling—"Robin! _Robin!_" a frantic, panicked tone he'd used maybe just once before when I'd ran at the precious generator and realized what would become of us in that moment, and yet to me it sounded like shrieks of Satan and the ghosts of the underworld summoned by Raven, with a manifestation of the emotions I felt in regards to a brighter past, made grey by the circumstances which it was vocalized. I screamed harder and louder and with everything to mimic it; the fort echoed with that sound and reverberated horribly under the pressure.

And then—calmness. I felt my jaw loosen and heard the unreal screaming, seemingly detached from my body, be silenced and left only by the sound of gears turning and clicking. They seemed very imagined to me—and I was beginning to question in the sudden haze that undertook me whether or not I was just imagining the gears, imagining everything. The haze, it seemed, had made me hopeful that way, had made me override the animalistic urges; it was making me think and in doing so I saw the walls of the fort crumbling around me—remembered the collapse as he had fled and I'd been left in a dreamy wondering about how he had reacted to my "sacrifice" when I'd been so sure it was the end of all of us—thinking about the way he had looked at me, never removing the gaze off me as he threw away the controller which would end my friends' lives—and mine. Remembering the state of the place in the aftermath made me come to, drew that logical, all-knowing Robin out of the depths of my troubled mind, the Robin Larry would have expected to have gotten on the mystery of—just what the hell was actually going on—a long time ago; and this Robin was beginning to question that, thinking—_none of this makes sense, I must be dreaming, high off the mask dust…There are no cogs and gears…_

I looked up at him and saw that he had his finger resting gently on a button which looked eerily similar to the one that controlled my friends' fates. I realized immediately that only when he had pressed it had I been calmed—that it had stopped my screaming and brought relevance back to my mind. It amazed me in this strange, horrifying but beautiful way, immediately, too, because at once I recognized that now, without a doubt in my mind as I thought it, he had total control over my body. There was no question; these "happy probes" did more than just make sure I couldn't do a repeat of last time—the gave him every ounce of control I had over my being, and at once I felt the embodiment of Terra. Immediately I felt weak and useless and a fool, in the back of my mind still thrashing myself because I hadn't "been smarter" or "done something more to stop him." These things were not true, not necessarily—I knew it, too—but their power was amplified by the new knowledge; amplified by dark memories of Terra as she looked upon the streets of her "conquered city" like a dictator, an empress, a queen—_Marie Antoinette_. Strange thoughts of—_would Slade have been _okay _if Terra had killed me?_

He didn't need to tell me anything. There were no cogs or gears but there was that calmness and the way he was staring at me, gently and easily as always but with this strange sense of worriedness, something almost unseen, to tell me all I needed to know wordlessly. In essence—the power he now had over me was unprecedented. Ultimately in that moment, in that look, I saw that there was no escaping Slade and I knew it internally, too, even as the thoughtful Robin contemplated and buzzed with ideas; as if that Robin was made so aware by the push of the button that it now completely overrode any hopes stirred by logical thinking—as if this look was enough to throw me into stark reality and leave me stranded there. Because now I wasn't thinking about how I would get out; instead I was thinking seriously about how I would survive and what I would be made to do in the name of Slade, how my friends would react. These might have once seemed animalistic, uncalculated, but in truth they were more deeply-rooted than I realized.

Because I was a _smart boy._

There were a lot of things I could have said to him in that moment as I looked up at him and we both had a cold, unspoken understanding; a knowledge of the other's position and all that implied; in that moment I could have gone a basic route—_how the hell did you _do_ this?—_or maybe a little deeper—_why do you want _me_? Would you have let Terra kill me? Would you have cared if I turned to stone? Does it matter to you anymore? _But I didn't either, even if I would have liked to, because something popped out of my mouth before I could stop it without any thought whatsoever. In hindsight I was probably wondering about this—had been for a while—and so in regards to Slade it was at the very front of my tongue when I was left groping for words. Yet it seemed so silly and irrelevant in that moment it seemed it was all I wanted to know even given my situation and all it would bring, the pain in the future; something so insignificant that should have been the least of my problems slipped out like I had rehearsed it confidently, set with a serious and undying stare up at him:

"What were you doing with Beast Boy?"

And yet I would not catch him off-guard—because Slade is not so easily caught off guard. In fact his expression didn't change and immediately I knew he wasn't in the least bit surprised—probably had expected me to ask sooner or later. And _I_ should have expected _that_—yet I was internally sneering, not so importantly or too my notice but I was, how much I hated that cool, calculated demeanor he always seemed to possess and how it could never for the life of him, literally, be shaken. I should have assumed that I could gain nothing back and yet was still groping and longing for power. I wanted to watch that eye widen uncertainly and store it in my memory, but I would not. Not for a while. Now he was street-smart Slade who had learned all my tricks and didn't give in so easily to any of them; a wary and practiced man who didn't act unless acted upon, not anymore, but remembered the days of his initial interference. He had a firsthand account of dealing with resistance and people like me; and there was not a chance he would have flinched at something so simple and irrelevant as a misplaced question after all he'd seen—after driving a young girl to both their deaths and subsequently dealing with betrayal from the Devil himself.

Instead he smoothly answered: "You will find out soon, my restless child. For now, you should get some sleep; the probes have adjusted to your DNA and so now you should give them a chance to finish healing you. There's a great deal of stress on your brain and we can't have that."

The resistant and stupid Robin was emerging, as if drawn out by his refusal to appease the thoughtful and wondering brother. It made me thrash suddenly in his grip. "The only reason," it spat, no matter how hopeless, pointless, it was, really, to do so, "there's stress on my brain, is because I was kidnapped by a psycho who should be really in the nuthouse by now!"

Again, he was unaffected. "Well I'm not, am I? Maybe if you could defeat me, little one, but we have yet to see that happen. If I recall, you were so far from that that I had to _save _you."

"_I would have rather died."_

The eye narrowed and gleamed, dangerously. Shivers were sent down my spine like venomous snakes. "But that's not _up to you_, Robin. Not anymore. If you wanted to die you should have spoken to another "villain," but how wise would I be, really, if I let you slip through my fingers? You see I'm persistent—and not even death could stop that…

The fact is, Robin, no matter what you do, or I do, you will _always _belong to me, and I can assure you that it is better for both of us that you stay at my side so that we don't lose sight of that again." The gaze softened as he fell into thoughtfulness. "You see, to be honest, when I served your little friend's father I thought of you little at first—mostly I wanted my body back. But you—you are so persistent like me, aren't you? Each time you interfered I remembered more of our earthly connection and grew farther from Raven's father. In the library I had decided how I would miss you when the end progressed; when I invaded your tower I decided I would not kill you; but when we fought together I decided if we lived that this is what would come of us—that I would make it be."

"So—that's what you meant by it not being so cut and dried." These thoughts, which should have been private musings, slipped out of my mouth in complete awe at what I was realizing—the completion of the puzzle that was our past; and though the pieces were less than crucial they were telling. I was caught up in placing them and little regarded the fact that he was practically claiming me for eternity in this one moment, or the fact that there was no way I should have missed this, not seen it coming, when our interactions in that ending world progressed—but maybe that was good, at least for now; though it led to my own telling questions which I couldn't keep contained, like the question about Beast Boy and the way it had almost spoken itself: "Why did you leave me alone for so long then?"

The eye gleamed softly, but now it had lost its evil sparkle of remembrance and was replaced by one gentle, an observing eye. Almost it seemed to sparkle in excitement though there was a veil upon it that was perhaps made to retain it as he said, "Later, Robin. Your heart is racing, and such stress is life threatening in these early stages. I shouldn't have used it so soon—yet your screaming alone could have very well killed you. I know you're emotional but for your own health, you need to train yourself to relax. What you can do now is go to sleep."

"How—_can I sleep?_" As he had said, my heart was racing dangerously quickly. Whether from the nostalgia in all its coldness creeping up on me or Slade himself or the situation in its entirety and what I could infer from it, I didn't know. The notion of calming to sleep from this seemed crazy—after all it's not like you're thinking about sleeping after you've _fallen from a building_, or faced Satan himself. "There's no way I can—"

He put two fingers to my lips. "You should start first by calming down—and I can help you; I can give you an anesthetic but only once your heart rate is back to normal."

"How can I—"

He held the other hand up and pressed the two fingers on my lips there more tightly. "Pst! Shut up—try some deep breathing."

I was exhausted and wouldn't deny him this—because in reality it wasn't like I had any choice when it came to the situation I was in and the type of control he had now over my life. Sleep was not seeming so badly to me, though I detested the idea and wanted nothing more than to let my heart race with the ideas of what he had done and _real_ comprehension of what was going on as opposed to a flurry of ideas and conceptions thrown hastily together; sleep to me was a light at the end of the tunnel where I could linger in blackness unknowingly until I returned to the evil Slade world once again. And—it was entirely possible that I was beginning not to care very much what was becoming of me—so overloaded with emotions that I would have rather just gotten out of it then stayed and fought a battle Larry's least favorite but depended-on Robin knew was completely pointless. Simply put—though I barely had the largest conception of what was really happening to me, I knew that this thing he wanted me to do, to sleep so that I would not die when my heart became overloaded, was almost unavoidable. After all: he was _very persistent_, as he had said, so why, for something so benign to those who mattered, put up a fight about it?

So I breathed deeply, in and out, and began to slowly but steadily relax. Like one of Raven's meditations (which the two of us had bonded further over after her birthday, when she'd been so grateful to me she'd insisted that she repay me with the good feelings and strength I had given her), I closed my eyes and focused on my breath; I slowly eased out everything else, first Slade, then the turning cogs and gears, then my own body and the light and isolated the spirit and mind so that they were aligned solely with the breath. Like Raven had taught me, I could have shifted further into the trance—could have taken myself through a journey of my thoughts and my inner-most desires, could have touched the spirit world and lingered there as long as I wanted; but these things would have made my heart race when it was over and done as I thought about what had happened there, because like Raven the rest of the titans, now too, could feel that spirit, the energy she dabbled in everyday, surging through our bodies and could feel the effects of that. Our gifted powers had not run out, which I had realized—and so would Slade, soon.

"Robin?"

Dreams were shrouded by the peaceful incantation—the wonderful and soothing energy that flowed as it was uttered. _"Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos_. _Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos. Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos." _In my dreams I sat beneath the sacred tree on the planet called Azarath and meditated to this incantation as it was whispered throughout the village and carried by the wind to tousle the leaves of the tree and my hair. Across from me Raven sat, her legs folded. Her cape fell at her sides, exposing her slender body wrapped in white. Her hair flowed around her head; her eyes, glowing softly a striking but restful and familiar red in that odd landscape. Her arms were open as she offered up her palms while she meditated, an expression of pure harmony. In that moment she became a goddess—the truest, most undiluted and untouched beauty in all reality. She was comfort and warmth and the very essence of the most at-peace human soul. She was the universe. Harmony. Magnificence.

"Robin."

"Raven," I spoke. The voice was effortless, and I felt disconnected from it—as if it were not mine, as if, considering everything, it did little to represent my true feelings.

"Robin, where are you?"

Her own voice was silken and beautiful; with unending comfort and peace within its threshold. It flowed with the incantation in perfect harmony and seemed to stir her dark hair and mine—seemed to encompass everything I was in that moment, to instill me with the warmth I had once given her. Like a blanket, it caressed me.

I wanted to do the same—to give warmth, to establish that connection, linger in the oneness and completeness. And yet—I could not answer to it. I tried—tried to scream: _"I'm with Slade! He's kidnapped me!"_ but all that would leave my mouth was the word, "Raven." I repeated it over and over, as if to answer her, as she called to me. Stretching out her arms she tried to reach to me; her hair flowed around her and I felt the energy she was giving off slowly making its way to my being, as she said, over and over, "Let me in, Robin, where are you? Show me."

Every time, I answered, "Raven, Raven," because it was all I could say. And her voice was growing more distant and my calling to her slowly fading; slowly the voice was dissolving into the sweet incantation, Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos, Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos. As her energy faded and the planet of Azarath drifted back into memory, her voice left me and I was left with that incantation only, and blackness, nothingness. Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos. Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos. Azarath—

"Metrion, Zinthos…_Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos_."

"_Robin!_"

The voice, such a cold and unfriendly offset of the human spirit, a distinct variation from the beauty that was Raven. This, a human voice, was unpracticed and immoral—filled with fear and terror, anger, hatred, such emotions that Raven could encompass to steal them away from those who would allow it to overtake them—like the owner of the voice that shattered my sweetness and safety. While that voice prodded, invaded the harmony of spirit, meditation became difficult—to manifest the connection, impossible. As if to assure me that it had truthfully been this mortal, Slade, which had kept me away from such feelings all my life.

"Azzz-arath, Metrioonnn…"

"_Robin! Stop it! Wake UP!"_

It was lost then—totally. My eyes shot open to an image frankly crude in comparison to the beauty I had just laid my eyes on; Slade, in all his violent and uncaring metal, standing over me, the glowing eye wide and twitching in a way I don't think I'd ever witnessed in the entirety of our career battling one another. His strong and violent hands straddled my shoulders and were shaking them, trying to pull me out of the beauty he so badly wanted me to never have or live, because then I couldn't have been his in this world so terribly evil and stained, tainted in its entirety. This world—where the gears turned and cogs clicked and the offensive yellow light warmed me to the point of discomfort and then the cold nostalgia went back and chilled me again to make me sweat bullets. This, a horrid place—where there was no oneness and one would do what one needed to get by whether or not it harmed another.

That world—it made me hate this one even more.

But I wouldn't realize it now—because now I was just trying to figure out how I _got _to that world in the first place.

Though of course I would have little time for that, now at least. "Robin," Slade breathed out, when he noticed my eyes open and alert, staring down at me again in an awe that was so foreign it also looked as though the person behind the mask was not in fact Slade but some imposter, another villain trying to get at me under the guise of the metal-man with one eye. "Where the _hell _did you just _go_?"

I answered him what I could: "I don't know."

0~0 0~0

"Good," he mused softly as he glanced at the screen where my vital signs were displayed. The probes were able to detect these things, he said, without the use of a suit which would have such sensors—and displayed there was everything any doctor would ever need—things that at one point I might have thought impossible to tell; up there I saw not only my heart rate and blood pressure and endorphins and the like but the number of breaths per minute, thought type, fear levels, rate of cell progression and growth, even bodily reactions like arousal, blinking, and a whole analysis of my movements to detect possible emotions. In a sense—everything he could ever want, because he was not a doctor, to do away with me or torture me accordingly. Basically—nothing was private anymore, either.

"Good," he said again, with more conviction, as he looked at my heart rate. It sat at an easy 75 BPM—maybe still a little fast but better than what it had been, he had said. He glanced at the screen as he moved the cool metal device over my exposed back, used to amplify sound and intensity frequencies so that a more accurate reading of my heart rate could be divulged. He found the spot he was looking for on my upper back and placed the device here. "Deep breath, Robin."

Sitting up on the operating table where I'd received my initial injection of the damned "happy probes," I wore nothing but a pair of light blue shorts; my mask, disregarded completely because he'd already perhaps had the time to sketch my eyes if he had wanted; I was slumped over like a wet noodle, exhausted now—feeling little more than a lab rat, considering the circumstances especially, as he checked all my vital signs to make sure everything was properly functioning after my "meeting," if you could call it that, with Raven. I asked him what he believed was so wrong with me when I felt perfectly fine, if more than just an excuse, because in fact I did not feel that _fine_, to get him to stop asking me where I went because I still didn't know; he said that besides the chanting of Raven's incantation, everything was normal…except for the fact that while lying there, an opposite of the other extremity I had just experienced, I had no heart rate at all. In fact, he would tell me that had my lips not been speaking the words, the sweet incantation, he would have believed me dead. This, he said—something we would have to watch carefully in regards to my safety. But it was more likely that simply to him it was a phenomenon he would be driven to madness did he not investigate, though I could have said otherwise.

This had gone on for an hour now—test after test until I felt like I was back in school again (Mad Mod's, if anyone's). And yet—I went with it, putting up little more than groans of exhaustion and mumbles of protest when he made me get up and move or do anything that required remotely exerting effort as my fight, and even then I did nothing when, rather than ask me tirelessly to move myself again and again after the first few failures, he began simply picking me up to eliminate unnecessary hassle and carrying me where he wanted me to go himself. I don't know where the fire was lost; whether it lie somewhere in Raven's domain or back on the operating table rewound four hours' passage of time, or maybe back in the streets, the lonely pier, the ashes of Cinderblock—but it was not here. I don't know if it was my thoughts which had overloaded me, didn't know if it was the dimming anesthetic, didn't know if it was a peaceful haze brought about by peaceful dreams—but I saw no reason to fight him when I honestly could not have been any weaker had I been run over by a semi-truck. Maybe the dream had made me non-confrontational—made me obedient _without_ the use of his little revamped _toy_. Maybe overall fatigue had made me not care—that, after having shrieked until my lungs deflated, fought like a cornered animal at least twice tonight, had my heart rate and thoughts taken for roller-coaster-esk spikes and plummets. But either way it did not matter—I was being good for Slade while he did what he wanted and he was pleased.

I groaned but took a deep breath in, held it for a few seconds, and then released it. Each time I did this I felt like I was breathing the very life out of me—breathing out the very spiritual soul of what I had felt with Raven which she'd left with me with each exhale and inhaling the rotting evil that encompassed that place; slowly, it was fading as I fell victim to the tests and analyses, the journey receding so that it could be replaced by Slade's own dark world, this new world he had created. And this night, exhausted, I'd let him. I breathed in and out for him—but wasn't that what my life had become about?

"That's my good boy," he said as I released the breath. Looking to the screen he saw that my heart rate was still at the nice constant, lowering a little as I started to drift into unwilling sleep. The other vital signs had leveled off and were now, similarly, at a steady constant, healthily normal so that the bombardment of tests could end, because thankfully he said, "Alright, little one, you're normal now."

My joy was short-lived, however, because he continued, "Though I would like to know what—"

I countered it with the loudest groan I could utter to let him know that I was done for tonight—whatever time it actually was. Exhaustion had got me and there was nothing more I was willing to do or would do for him, or for myself, for that matter, until I was rested. If he expected me to answer questions now, let alone about something I couldn't _answer_, then he was even more stupid than I thought. I wanted to know about what had happened just as much as him, but in that moment of drowsiness it wouldn't have mattered if my life had depended on it (being I would rather have just taken death so I could sleep endlessly).

But he took the subtle hint, thankfully. "Alright, I suppose it's time you get back to bed. I assume that your last nap wasn't the most restful. So fine. I'll be patient—after all, I've waited three years, my little one."

He picked me up and carried me to the bedroom I had stayed in when I had first been his apprentice—still, totally intact, yet still shrouded and stained with painful memories. Darkness, encompassing it, but I was too far-gone to notice just yet. Now it was just bedroom where I would rest—but when I woke up it would be a vessel for unrelenting nostalgia to fill until it eventually drown me. When I was awake this place would be alive with memories, and no longer would I be Slade's "good boy;"

When I woke I would be reignited with that passion to protest and be true to myself, the true Robin, Larry's favorite.

And when I woke I would no longer be able to hide behind sleepiness, duck out of the light of reality; when I woke I would be Slade's apprentice yet again, and there was much he wanted from me. I would learn that.

"_Robin—if you see that witch in your dreams again, tell her I'd like to have a word with her."_


	4. Avrretta, Claret, Gabriel, and Joseph

Terra, a girl I had little known and too much detested visited my dreams that night, as if to ignite impending rebellion within me against Slade, her boyish, warped figure with a voice resembling male pre-pubescence and the mean, hateful things it spoke being bad enough, when coupled with the knowledge of who she was speaking in the name of made her a sickening symbol of everything the Titans—anyone, really—strove not to be.

At first I did not hate her—in fact, I pitied her even after she'd tried to kill me and presented my badge to Slade like Red X's chips. At first, that little mattered—because what more or better should I have expected from Slade?—and because Terra didn't know any better; she may have constantly claimed to be anything but helpless but when it came down to it, she was really nothing more than a stupid and easily manipulated child who served as a catalyst for Slade's plans and nothing more. So I did not feel threatened, frankly, and even when she tried to crush me with the rock controlled by her weird powers I felt sorry for her because I knew that she was inevitably doomed and little we could do would change that; and when she died I mourned for her and asked god—if there was one which existed, though attempts to speak to such a god were not typical of me—to protect her from Slade in the afterlife—to keep her from that pain again. And when it was all said and done, I thought of her from time to time; once, only a few weeks after her death, I dreamed vividly of Terra and the cavern—stone crumbling and emerging a beautiful version of the girl said to be so evil, emanating anything but such vibes and serving almost like a lighthouse or a sense of hope—simply put, a warm energy there, one that was safe and holy and good, and everything felt okay. She held out the badge to me—the R in all its glory, unharmed, and smiled at me. When I woke up, I didn't think of what I would do. I went to the cavern.

Two in the morning twilight barely illuminated the place—and it was soon lit solely by my flashlight. My boots echoed against the stone floors and water dripped and sounded—and still I heard the sounds of talking within the walls; I heard the sound of soft crying and the sound of something being kicked or beaten. I heard Slade's voice blend to a low and horrifying murmur, eerily echoing the dripping water and the tapping of my feet. I felt like something was standing behind me and as I made my way further downwards, the feeling only grew stronger;

And yet, when I came to the figure, the feeling was dispelled. Terra stood there in all her wonder, those last moments of her life captured in that solemn statue's face, marking perhaps the best and most noble thing she had ever used her powers and soul and spirit to do. Like in the dream a warmth emanated from the statue and the coldness that I had felt, the certainty that some large, tattered corpse, strings of flesh hanging off its face and its hands cold and bony and smelling of embalming fluid, was immediately so distant it seemed like a dream. The whole cavern felt to have the attitude of a warm and welcoming household where one could rest and not worry of the evils of the world—and even more so when I picked up the badge, sitting at the base of the statue.

Like new, polished, beautiful, gleaming up at me from the base of the statue, was the R. I took it, and exchanged it for my communicator. A spell was broken—and I felt it, more certainly than anything I had in my life.

That night, I thanked her.

But hatred really only started to creep in, defying the love and bond we had had in our troubles with Slade in the cavern that night where we had freed each other from eternal wondering and unrest, when she returned—or so has been told to me; what we had vowed to do for her so that she could once again do what she was meant to do, to be one of the Titans, and to light up Beast Boy the way she always seemed to do, became the very thing that pushed me into loathing and resentment. Because what was once a hopeful and cherished idea of reuniting and all that would entail became the very thing that shattered my best friend's heart;

When Terra decided that no longer she remembered him—that, that once so important and valued part of his life, as if had never existed and he was just hallucinating, like me when I believed Slade had come back and it was so terribly real but I was continuously reassured there was something wrong; and both of us were left feeling frustrated and tired, angry, and alone in ways that were different and yet so similar at the same time. For me, Slade might not have ever existed in my life—and maybe we had never faced Terra; and because there was confusion on so many levels of who actually existed any longer that it was impossible to tell, really, if I hadn't died long ago at the hands of Jack, or maybe if I was just asleep in the cave in Gotham and had dreamt the whole thing, never leaving. Maybe the war still raged and Deathstroke still seasoned the kids in 'Nam—but maybe Slade never lost that eye. And maybe Jericho could talk.

Who knew anymore? _Things used to be so cut and dried._

One day, I visited this high school Beast Boy claimed Terra now went to; the only one in our city where regular kids fell into the anonymity of tests and quizzes and homework—where the biggest problem became waking up one morning and realizing they'd acquired an unsightly zit; the kids who ran from danger and whose most excitement came from their significant other at some school dance. To be honest, the kinds of kids I looked down upon and secretly felt better than—looked at them slyly to hide my smugness because I knew they were looking at me and thinking—_what a_ _badass, he's so cool, you know how many times he's saved the city? I wish I could get with him. _And that had never been a question or a mystery to me—not even the least bit. Even then, as the girls in the hallways giggled and blushed and waved at me, some coming up to me and practically rubbing themselves on me to be noticed, that conception of the kids was strengthened that much further, as I noticed their boyfriends looking enviously and helplessly at me. I had no respect for these kids and yet, they made me feel _fly_.

One of the girls was especially cute, and reminded me of a fellow Titan—a pretty girl with locks of wild hair almost covering her entire face, and with eyes that distinguished her even in the drab school-uniforms—yuck—and made her stand easily above that gray inconspicuousness; her skin was pale and powdery but the facial features were further heightened by dark makeup and stones that matched her red eyes dangling from her ears. She did not come up to me but watched me from the corner, smiling, not needing to because I noticed her instantly and pushed the red-haired girl who had been admiring my cape off of me; I went to her instead and noted, of course, the heated and hateful looks girls gave her—and I think she noticed to, but like me it only made her eyes gleam further—and the way the boys sighed with thankfulness that their competition was "taken."

"Argent, is that you?"

"Well if not who'd ya think it was, darlin?" She said, and hugged me. When I hugged her back, I swore I felt rage-driven fire heating my back, only neutralized by the boys' relief. "But keep it down, baby, yeah? I don't want any a' these hoes knowin."

As we pulled apart, I said, "What are you doing here—Silver? I thought you went back to New Zealand."

"Almost, yeah," she said, at first looking deep in thought but then smiling, "Yeah, but after those wankas in Paris I didn't want to set another foot in Europe. I know we got 'em but—you know, Gabe and I didn't find it much romantic anymore."

I smiled, knowingly. "You and Harold?"

She responded, similarly, with a knowing and sort of dreamy smile at the name of the trumpet wielding phantom, though she said, teasingly, "Yeah? What's it to ya? Should I announce it so you can get 'ya chickies back? Or is this better for you and Star?"

I blushed, but smiled and laughed at her, hitting her shoulder playfully. "Yeah, that's good, better for me and Star. And for you and—Vox? Gabe? What's he go by now?" I said—_perfectly and seamlessly_ deflecting the conversation away from Starfire and I (and even thinking back on it seems so stupid).

Still, even being one to tease, she was too caught up with the idea of her beloved that she couldn't be bothered. "Oh, yeah, Vox, he's changing his name to Gabriel cause he's afraid one of them wankas'll come back and track him down. Ya know before the two of us were so secret, and we were revealed at the worst time—so he goes by Gabriel now and I go by Claret, and we've been hangin here incase those wankas get un-froze."

I smiled at her. "Claret? I like it. But you don't have to worry about them—I don't think they'll be back—if ever, not for a while at least, and you know we'll be ready if they do."

"Yeah," she agreed, but then her smile left, and she adapted a tone of seriousness, "but ya never know—and it's not like we got all of them, did we? That can't be all the scum of the world."

"It's not," I said, and thought of Terra. Briefly, just maybe, in the reaches of my mind, the one villain who hadn't showed his face even when the thought of destroying the Titans came to mind, or the knowledge that myself and Joseph would be there and pretty weak for the taking (though this was not even apparent to me at the time)—_Slade_, not immediately, not brightly, not importantly, but he was there, I think—and yet not enough to be acted or thought upon, unfortunately. "But we've got it, here, if you want to go back home. We're always in touch."

She smiled and patted her pocket, which vaguely seemed to contain the communicator I'd given each of them before they left—one that was now, with the help of Cyborg, virtually impossible to tap into its signal. But then, the hand fell away and her face once again became serious. "Yeah, Robin, you don't think you should leave? Me and Gabriel have been hearin things…"

"Hearing things?" I said, slowly, looking into her ruby eyes which seemed to be for the first time anything but confident and knowing—which, for the first time, seemed to possess depths of fear and uncertainty. "What have you been hearing?"

"Well, you know, Vox has been frequenting the city, ya know, watching out for trouble, and so have a lot of the others, cause they're worried about you…you know, we're just afraid that one of them's gonna come back. It's been pretty quiet and ya know, that never means anything good."

"What have you been hearing?"

She hesitated, but then said, slowly, her delicate hands gripping the communicator once again, "Well, you know Vox is watchin' out for that little mute kid—Jericho, yeah? He was with him the other day and Jericho told him—telepathically, I guess—when they were thinking about the BHE, that we didn't get all the criminals who really mean something—and he said you were in trouble. He said—he said his father wasn't with the villains and that he foresaw some guy, the father, named Wilson coming back for you—whoever that is. He said that his father hates the BHE cause they were more powerful than him, and was waiting until they were out of the way to make himself known again. I don't know, Jericho was sure that he'd come back soon and try to take down the Titans again. He said that while we fought them Wilson was standing in the corner, watching. We didn't know what ta think."

At the time, the name "Wilson" and the connection to Jericho meant nothing to me. "Well, whoever it is he's talking about, we'll be ready for him. I want Gabriel to keep his eye on Jericho to make sure this "dad" of his doesn't get his hands on him. But you don't have to worry about me."

"You sure, Robin?" she said, hesitantly, looking at me again with the eyes that were more scared than ever, filled with uncertainty and this odd, forward thinking perception that this time talking to me would be her last.

I was sure—and that sureness, my own certainty and overconfidence was what ended up damning me. "I'm sure, Claret. So why are you here?—wearing this…_uniform? _It's not black you know," I said, teasingly, laughing, smiling, shaking off the distant feeling, the feeling in the back of my mind, the knowledge that soon enough I would be met with my fate at the hands of my most hated enemy, the one enemy who got to me and crippled me as a person. In denial, I covered these weak thoughts with a haze of falsified awareness and staged happiness, forced laughter, and the idea that even if an enemy struck, I would have no trouble bringing them down, as I always did.

She smiled, and laughed, too, and the tension and odd feeling of dread had completely left the conversation; the thoughts of knowledgeable, realistic Robin, dismissed immediately. "Well we've been all over town trying to watch out for trouble. Ya friend, Raven—she said that there's a girl needs to be watched out for here when she heard about what Jericho said. So I been watching this hoe, _Terra_—at least Raven's sure it's her. I don't know. But she hasn't moved any earth since I got here. A normal little hoe to me."

"You've seen Terra? I came to talk to her," I said, thinking _too little _about Claret's words—_Raven said there's a girl needs to be watched out for when she heard about Jericho… _"She's been ignoring Beast Boy—and I need to find out why."

"Uh, I dunno, Robin. I don't think it's her. You'd think a girl who could move the dirt would have been showing some signs of that by now, yeah? I'm gonna keep watching 'a, but I don't think it's anything you gotta worry about. I've talked to her—I said, _you hear about the Teen Titans? You hear how they saved Paris?_—and she said she heard about it but that was all. She said she could never do what we do. I think she's just some normal girl—and she doesn't even go by Terra. She said her name's Avrretta, and she's only been in Jump City for the school year—and ya Raven told me she used to be friends with you guys, like three years ago."

"Yes," I said, slowly, looking at her and mimicking her past look of being deeply engrossed in thought, "but she could be lying."

"Yeah, she could be," Argent replied slowly. " but I don't think she is. And I don't think she's any trouble. But I've got my eyes on her anyway, so you don't have to worry."

I looked at her for a few moments, and then said, slowly, "Are all the other Titans still here?"

"Most—we're all staying close 'case Wilson decides to show up. And they want me to tell ya that if he shows up, call us—don't fight 'im on your own. Jericho says he can talk to 'im."

Needless to say, when this _Wilson_ showed up a few days later with his single, glowing eye, shining mask and warrior-esk armor, we didn't. I wouldn't let the others—because in the back of my mind, as one might recall, I had a very good and firm knowledge that who we would face would be this Wilson—unknown to me then—and he, Slade, was my fight. Again with condescension I didn't need any _little Honorary Titans_ to help me defeat him—I never had. And yet, I would learn soon enough that even if we had called them, they would have been no use.

They were all unconscious that night.

"Will you talk to Terra—_Avrretta_—for me? Try to get her to give up something about Beast Boy—and since she doesn't know you're a Titan she probably won't lie about it, even if she lied about her name and her past. It doesn't matter; if she's Terra she'll want to talk to someone about Beast Boy because I know she still loves him. So if you can get her to talk about him, we'll know she's our girl and I'll take over."

"You got it, Robin. Good to see ya, again, yeah? But I gotta git—a test next period," Argent said, and laughed at the idea of it.

I grinned and reached out and took her hand and shook it. "It was good to see you too, Claret. If you or anybody else needs a place to crash, you know where to come."

"That's great, Robin," she said, and grinned. "Yeah, I might just have to take you up on that."

I laughed. "Sounds good."

"I'll tell Gabriel to keep an eye on that Jerry, yeah? And if we hear anything else about Wilson, we'll let ya know—and call us if you see 'im, yeah?"

"Yeah, okay," I said, and watched as she was already prancing off down the hallway, receiving fiery looks from her _competition_. _"Okay."_

Outside the school as I was leaving, I noticed Terra sitting beneath a tree, watching the kids as they walked by, alone, her hair dangling down over one of her eyes, making the vibe that she was very content to be alone—shrouding her in a shyness we had never seen from her when she'd been our friend. I walked past her without saying anything, but our eyes quickly locked—if only for the smallest second, but they locked. I could see in those eyes even for the briefest of moments—the blue eyes shining with the knowledge of everything we had done together, that strangely forged relationship with not only me but everyone else on the team and how that affected her in the deepest of ways; how she understood that the two of us were bonded together and knew, that no matter how she tried to hide, that bond, that breaking of curses would never be forgotten or dispelled. I loved her in that moment and she loved me, too; for a moment, it felt as though we had just met for the first time and yet the two of us destined to have met and would never be separated thus. I looked at her and wanted to run to her—and she did, also. Tears were contained—but I had been the one who freed her and she loved me for that. Unspoken, silent but warmer and brighter than anything since, when we locked eyes everything felt okay; when we locked eyes she almost did what we both so desired, stood on her feet and ran to me and embraced me—and we were almost joined completely by the bond we had established in breaking the curse of Slade. No longer did it matter if she'd be best hiding from the world so as not to repeat her dangerous and uncontrolled past—because I was her friend and would be there for her forever, and so would the others. I felt my eyes filling with tears, suddenly, though I had no idea why—because I was not sad in the least, and no more was I hating her and what she had done to Beast Boy. I had hope and the tears that were gathering in my eyes were of that hope, that wondering, that certainty of the future, that Terra and I would always be able to rely on the other because we understood that pain and what it did to the mind. In that moment, I was sure that Terra and I would embrace—not just hug, but _embrace—_as we wanted to and share that warmth and eternal comfort, and the Slade or Wilson or whoever he was would be wiped from our memories as we lapsed into warm, late-summer twilight. We would never be separated then. In that moment, I wanted to kiss her more than anything else—and she wanted to, too.

But then, it was gone, and she looked away, down to the previously disregarded textbook laying in her lap—that love, that bond, completely forgotten, again, distorting reality, as if it had never really existed at all and I didn't know what to think. As she looked away, the beautiful blue eyes closing, I saw a single tear glide down her cheek; and likewise, one single of the tears gathering in my eyes fell beneath my mask and traveled down my own cheek, one which could not be controlled but was not attempted to be. I reached out a gloved hand, slowly, timidly, and the words left my mouth before I could stop them.

"Terra…" I said, my lips shaking, a lump in my throat, "Terra, it's _me_, _Robin_…"

She did not open her eyes or turn her head; in fact her mouth pursed more tightly together and she seemed to struggle to keep her eyes closed, to keep her head from turning so that she could look at me and into my eyes. She hugged the textbook close to her chest and slowly stood up, still not looking at me, her eyes completely closed but tears streaming swiftly down them, and, opening her mouth to release a shuddering sob, she turned and ran, in the opposite direction. The leaves on the tree quivered in the summer breeze and I was left alone, as the sun sunk in the sky. That wind seemed to whisper to me in that moment—_I'm sorry, Robin. I'm sorry._

She used to visit my dreams. Once we had broken the spell, we would sit in lonely fields and stare at distant mountains in the blaze of the warm, comforting afternoon sun as it set and she would smile at me—and her body would be glowing with the beauty it possessed. When we touched there was an endless bliss that touched the very reaches of my soul and called me into infinite peace and harmony—as if, no longer were there any villains but simply the warm realm of the comfort relationships brought. The two of us would sit in that field, embracing to drive off the evil, and we would watch the sun set, though darkness never came. We never talked; looking into one another's eyes was enough to convey everything we felt—and it was beauty. Magnificence. Unprecedented—almost made me forget about Starfire, back in the world of the wakeful.

That dream was always the same and I dreamed it frequently.

But after she returned—after that night when we locked eyes for the last time—she never visited my dreams again until tonight, and I _never_ sat with her in that field again.

The warmth was lost.

And hatred crept back in as it had when things were shrouded by Slade; when things were darker.

Tonight, sleeping in Slade's dreary domain, the dreams of Terra would reflect that darkness as if my mind was directly influenced by the environment in which I now slept. In the dream—our field was on fire. Slade stood in the field, his shadow in the fiery, dancing light thrown over Terra and Beast Boy, who were huddled together, shaking, staring up at Slade with wide eyes, expressions of pure horror taking them. Their confidence and elegance and perfectness—the two of them united like Terra and I in our bond—had crumbled and lay around them, the hulls shriveled and crumpled. Slade, with the burning insignia on his forehead and flames coming from his eye and slots in his mask, had turned the other Titans to stone—except me, Raven, and Jericho. Raven clasped Slade's shoulders and filled him with this horrifying power used to destroy the Titans, and to further the conquest; Jericho stood near, his eyes glowing, repeating—_watch out for father, Robin, watch out for father…I talk in death only, Robin… _And his voice—an actual voice, actual spoken word—muddled by Terra's screaming—_Robin—the field is burning! You're letting it burn—Stop the field from burning!_

But she was silenced by the two looming and ominous, malevolent, encompassed figures, who spoke in sickening harmony, their voice, singularly, taking upon it the satanic tone of Trigon—_Silence, Terra, Silence Terra, Silence Terra, join the Titans—rise Avrretta!_

And she was turned to stone; Beast Boy's shrieks of horror, too, were silenced as stone became him.

Then out of the stone that was Terra raised a girl dressed in a dull, dreary uniform, clutching a blank textbook, her eyes empty and gray like TV static. I looked into those eyes but there was nothing—no current which would carry us to safety and harmony. And without word she turned and walked away, her hands at her sides, echoed only by the sound of flames crackling and Joseph's murmuring—_Robin, watch out for my father—I speak only in death. _And the girl, Avrretta, Terra, left that field and faded into flames.

Raven and Slade turned in time to stare at me with burning red eyes, each—the three seeming to join to create a perfect incarnation of Trigon. Raven's cape fluttered around them, and their red energy mingled with hateful and menacing darkness encompassing their bodies so that all I seemed to see in that moment was two shadow figures, whose only features illuminated were a creeping smirk and narrowed eyes. And they walked to me while Jericho chanted, softly—_watch out for father, Robin, he chooses you, all else will fade before you—I speak only in death, Robin._

When they were before me, a single dark hand crept out, the fingers outspread and the palm open; the two shadow figures leaned forward and loomed over me now, where I sat, pressed helplessly and frozen against the fluttering tree, its leaves crackling as fire took them. When they spoke to me, it was as one, and flames flared up around us, making the ground crumble and fire encompass me; It said—_give me that badge, little one, give me that badge, Terra speaks only in life—and Avrretta speaks only in death, give me the badge, give me the badge, little one…_

And the badge appeared, a decrepit R caked in dirt and rusted as years' worth, in the shadow hand; the figures interspersed throughout the field—Beast Boy, Starfire, Gabriel the angel, Claret, and Joseph—crumbled as distant shrieks sounded. Raven, clinging to the other, immediately hardened to rock and then dissipated as the others as the wind gusted.

And Slade and I were left alone in the flames.

I woke up screeching.

0~0 0~0

"Would you mind telling me what you were dreaming about, Robin?"

Slade stood over me as I sat on the side of the bed; at the current moment, sweat was still dripping down my face in thick rivets, trickling down my exposed chest and gathering on my shorts, and I was still shaking in the aftermath of that strange and haunting but somehow extremely relevant dream, which I already understood I would never forget. My heart was just barely at the desired rate—again, now still too fast though a vast improvement from where it had previously been, just scraping the surface of 130 BPM; having woken up to Slade and his various needles, I realized that my heart had probably been racing even in the earliest stages of the dream—and he told me that he saved my life, because had that heart-rate gone unchecked, and I, allowed to continue to sleep, it would have undoubtedly ruptured from the pressure—stopped dead in its tracks dragging me from life in the most horrid of ways, with the most horrid last impression. When I woke he had been injecting me with several different substances, possessing calming effects, I assume—and to be honest I don't doubt that that was what had saved my life; but I give him no credit for it either—because again to be honest, I was feeling at this moment that if I died, it would not have mattered either way.

Now my naked fingers gripped the bed, digging into the mattress with such strength that my fingernails ached and the seams of the sheets and mattress were heard to rip. Likewise my teeth were clenched so violently, I heard them grind and crackle within my mouth. My head was down, because I didn't want to look at him, as I growled with this sudden, hateful ferocity taking hold of me as I emerged further from the dream. In fact the sight of him after something like I had dreamt, as it had been when I opened my eyes, was enough to fill me with an endless supply of rage—so much that it became almost impossible to keep from lashing out at him, jumping, clawing at him violently with these aching and tried nails until I ripped into the metal and reached the very center of his person, what pushed me toward death now.

The progression of this was anything but progression because it was anything but slow. I think the minute I saw him after such a dream, where I had been instilled with this crazy urge, this undying need to preserve everything within me, the integrity of my friends, the rage had flooded in without a single, groggy moment to consider it. He had been throwing questions my way almost immediately after I arrived in the wakeful world, almost as quickly as my hatred came, along the lines of my health—stupid questions like _are you okay? _(do I look okay, you moron?)—and only further managed to enrage me. His voice became like that red fire that had filled my world, and the only thing I could think—not, what about where you are now, what do you think of this?, not even, what does that dream mean?, what should you do?, was how much I hated his disgusting, wearing voice and how I longed, more than anything, to rip his vocal cords from his throat in that moment. I thought of nothing else, because that voice enveloped all other thought, and the questions continued until I could not handle it any longer. "Shut the hell up!" I had barked, and for a while there had been the silence—that of his stunned, disbelief at how I had talked to him, his _little Robin_. And in that silence my heart-rate fell, if for a few minutes—and even in that silence the thoughts did not return and briefly I fell into a gray void which provided more comfort than I had felt in all of those last few weeks—I fell, and stayed there until he spoke again;

Rage, reignited when he spoke—"Robin, I understand you're upset, but you _will not_ talk to me that way, young man."

My head had snapped up and I looked at him, feeling fire burning as brightly in my eyes as had in his in the dream. "I'll snap your neck if you ever call me that again."

The eye widened, in brief dismay at how I was speaking to him, but then it narrowed, and the fists clenched, "Now, _young man_, watch those threats of yours. You wouldn't want to try to make good on that, believe me."

I threw my fist towards his stomach only moments after considering what he had said, after only _moments _of looking into his eyes and alerting him that I wasn't going to take that crap as rage burned hotter and more wildly—but that was all he needed to be prepared. He caught the fist before it could come in contact with the armor. I thought he would fling me against the wall, twist my arm, crush the fist—something to give me an excuse to continue fighting him; though that would have been too much what I wanted and when it came to Slade, what _I _wanted was less than important in the grand scheme of things. And it didn't matter if he himself wanted to fight—because he would not give me that satisfaction no matter how much he wanted it himself. So he released my fist; and for a few moments, we lapsed into thoughtful silence; and my hands came back down to the mattress and clenched there if they could not dig into Slade's bare flesh mercilessly.

He was looking at the suit hanging on a hook on the wall—the only other thing in the room besides the bed. The suit, with its sleek metal buckles and straps and wristbands glinted at me; the S on the left side, over the heart (the pounding, racing one), seemed to twist into a sadistic smirk thrown at me as it sparkled in the low light cast by the fixture bolted onto the wall near the door in this haunted place; and as if it was an image of myself it hung there in a deflated, subservient fashion—hung over, like I had been when, so many years ago, I had vowed to obey him for that last time; but the S stood up and out and smirked at me, its smile tossing light in all directions. In the S, I saw the reflection of Slade's eye as he examined it, and the fingers were unconsciously digging more deeply into the bed.

"So, were you dreaming about me, boy?" Slade said, half turning back to look at me. "Is that what makes you so angry?"

The fingers, if any indication, tore through the mattress, though it was thick and quality, sewn without faltering or hesitation—total confidence. "I don't have to tell you," I hissed through the clenched teeth, my eyes, focused on my bare feet, as if, picking some point and fixating the gaze on it would keep me from going insane in the presence of Slade. "That's not my job!"

"Ah, but it is, my good little boy," he said, the eye narrowing. "You belong to me now and you _will _do as I say unless you want your worthless little friends—_all of them_—to meet an early death."

It was then that my head snapped up; my mouth had fallen open as the jaw loosened, the eyes, now wide as they stared at the single glowing eye. "You—"

That shining eye mimicked mine in its wideness—but his was derived from a crazy, intense passion stroked within him like that which he had possessed when under the influence of Trigon—like in the dream. "Oh, I like your new friends, Robin. They're just that much more reassurance that you will be my _good little boy_."

In a moment that revoked déjà vu, there was a storm of thoughts mingling in my mind almost as to dull all thinking to a helpless and muddled gray—and yet, of all the thoughts I could have voiced, one, so inappropriate, so unimportant to that moment, so foolish, slipped effortlessly out of my mouth, heightened by a wild tone stoked by this blaze of emotions, immediately;

"_Who is Jericho?"_ I shrieked, standing up off the bed and pulling the bed-sheets and a good deal of thread from the mattress, embedded within my fingernails now, as I did. _"Who the _hell_ is Jericho?"_

And in déjà vu, there was no surprise from Slade; simply, the eye narrowed as he turned to face me in full, offset by the gleaming smirk of the S lurking in the background like a headless body, a brainless and demonic, creeping corpse: "My son, Robin."

It was then that I could not restrain it any longer, cause or no—

I lunged at Slade, shrieking out the mixture of my emotions.

And even when I had my answer, I continued to shriek—

_"Who is Jericho? __**Who is** **Jericho?**_"

* * *

Author Note:

Hey everyone-I'd like to thank everyone who has reviewed/followed/favorite the story. I would like to encourage everyone to leave feedback, suggestions, comments, etc. And I appreciate it if you have; I try to take them into consideration to improve the story.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and if you'd like more let me know (also suggestions or things you'd like to see happen are always welcome).

~VC

P.S. (Pissing out the window, and Sh-ing out the window, are two different things!)

**Holy Sh#t UPdate-Saturday**

**Holy shit-I did something soooooo completely stupid today I won't be able to sleep. Well, not stupid, but I am f##ked. See, I was at an antique store today and I saw this picture-of a burial plot with a bunch of flowers and the headstone said something like Clarice, or something. I just bought it immediately without even really thinking about it. Then later on at another store I found a photo; this bright eyed baby Who I think might be dead-a Victorian death photo, yeah?. I got them home and put them on my wall, and for a few minutes I was okay.**

**Then my heart started to race and I looked at them and realized-holy shit, there is something not right about these photos. Holy shit. I get physically sick when I look at them and that's just after a few hours of having them, and even after taking them down I'm scared as hell D= Holy crap, I'm not gonna be able to sleep so I'm gonna try to update this again to take my mind off them, but if you never hear from me again it's because I've gone nuts and am in the hospital! Oh god, I should burn these things but I want to sleep with them under my pillow instead!**

**Tell Slade he's an ass-le!**


	5. Visions--Joseph and Trope

Jericho—likewise a person I understood too little about but was so strangely connected to that it would only seem inappropriate I shouldn't understand more; and yet, only having spoken to him once, it seemed impossible that I should feel as strongly linked to him as I did; to add to this, the consideration that he was mute would have seemed to assure that we could never be close enough, and yet as he manipulated my mind so that we could communicate it only seemed to bring us closer—like my bonds with Raven or Terra, strange connections forged from circumstance alone and the way we were thrown together the way we were so haphazardly.

When all of the Titans swarmed our tower in the aftermath of the BHE, taking refuge there and making it a temporary home for several weeks—and of course, as told to me by Argent, still swarming the city even after they all cleared out—Jericho was one of the only of them that seemed uncomfortable to stay. As the Honoraries and East raided the refrigerator and pilfered poor Cyborg's and Beast Boy's video games and tech, and, into the late hours of each night, blasting loud music which they danced to with one another until they passed out on the coaches and the ground and stayed that way until early morning—Jericho crept out into the blackness and meditated with his guitar sounding softly and somehow hauntingly as beautifully in that midnight darkness, and even then he seemed disturbed; because the shy boy who couldn't speak was not the type to hang out at a party where one of the favored games was karaoke, and whose muteness had pushed him into a further recession from friends that he would not dance, either. But if that all had been removed—if we were sitting in a field of poppies listening to him play his guitar and making wreathes out of those poppies—he still would have been upset, and I saw that. There was something within him that seemed to be brooding, harboring something terrible, blackness building within him; you could look into his eyes and he would look back but you would know he was not really _looking_ because Joseph—he was lost in there somewhere, and could only be drawn back when you went up to him and tapped him, and even then he barely lingered. Most of the Titans seemed not to notice, but a few—myself, Raven, and Kole would not be so easily unaffected.

In this period of two weeks, she would approach me as I was talking to Thunder and Lightning in the hallway outside the main meeting-room where at that current moment, I think, it had turned into a suffocating medley of noise deriving from a makeshift virtual band formed for the game they were playing; Cyborg synthesizing some beat for them as Hotspot wildly played the guitar and Harold proving accompaniment with a trumpet, though not his own, still flawlessly and impressively. I had actually been helping them with their stupid symphony—the virtual drums, banging my head until I felt like I would throw up, though it made everyone laugh (most notably the ladies) so it was okay with me—when the two of them returned to the tower looking pretty disturbed and insisted my audience. And though the "fans" were pretty disappointed, I could tell they were really upset and so I handed over the drumsticks to Beast Boy, who we had been jokingly excluding from the fun as long as we could.

They had been in the Chinatown district of the city with Bushido, promising to make us a meal like their parents had taught them to in the traditional fashion, though most of the Titans would have been content to just order Chinese food and have it at the tower in less than an hour—but we went along with anyway. They said they were walking through the crowded streets and noticed a man coming out of one of the more _specialty _shops; this man, they said, looked like the very profile of everyone outsiders thought of people of their culture—dressed in a long, flowing red robe, a large hat, shrouding the majority of his face in mystery. His long, white hair flowed around his head and about his mouth, but "the smirk was unforgettably evil!" as Lightning had exclaimed, clenching his fists. They said that this man leaving the specialty shop, which happened to be a Chinese offset of the darker arts, was clutching a bottle of some unknown substance in his hands and looking down at it with a grin that would have made the teeth crackle as crazy and driven as it was.

"The old one!" Thunder said, looking at me with an intense look taking hold of his features; the eyes, dancing with fear and the unending pain and frustration of that. "It was the old one, Robin!"

"This one you call Slade!" Lightning added, reflecting that same look in his own wild and flickering eyes. "He was buying a potion and from the looks of it, it seems to me to be something strong and evil!"

I had met these looks of fear with my own of skepticism; again, as I had been on the night of my re-capture, I was putting up a defensive and totally uncaring attitude, an incredulity that made it easier to live and thrive even when the greater and smarter part of me knew that the laziness could only shroud that truth for so long—that, soon enough, there would too great a reality to face and no longer could I pretend that I wasn't thinking of Slade in this time of inactivity; no longer would I be able to hide behind the anonymity that his absence created, leveling out these vying emotions—and in such anonymity thoughts became dull and emotions irrelevant; and it became easier to allow disinterest to creep in, not matter how much I secretly knew and longed for something new and something brighter; secretly, wishing for a crime that was not shared with my friends—not a great victory over an adversary where things were diluted and half-dead but the easy crime where I felt always that one single eye as it watched me;

As we escaped Mad Mod's trippy school or—_defeated the Brotherhood of Evil,_ that one eye watched me and me only. And it thought.

Simply, where I lingered then—an unprecedented state of denial.

"You _saw_ Slade?" I said, raising an eyebrow to mimic my doubt. "Are you sure? I haven't seen him in two years, at least. Maybe—"

"It was _him, Robin!_" Lightning said, and his fists were further tightened; the expression of wild awareness still dancing in his eyes. "I could never forget that eye if I tried! We know little about him and yet he provokes an energy of evil! _One could not forget him!_"

I thought on this for the briefest moment—at least, I pretended to, actually—before I decided to humor them—or whatever I really wanted to accomplish in this horrible, senseless state of denial. "So—did you guys talk to him or something? What happened?"

They exchanged quick glances, uneasily. "Well, no—" Thunder said slowly.

"But he was aware of us," Lightning added in an almost defensive fashion. "Thunder and I…when we saw him coming out of the store we just gasped and didn't know what to do at first—but he heard us and looked up at us, somehow in that huge crowd like he knew we were going to be there! And the expression only became more crazed, Robin! The one eye was glowing and the grin was of one who is not well!"

Nodding, Thunder added grimly, "There was something not right about this man, Robin. We couldn't forget the old one if we tried—and he didn't forget us."

And again—I was cloaked in that disinterest and trust that made even the most sensible and persuasive argument extraneous, one that, had I heeded its warning, might I not be where I am today, with Slade; one that now I regret turning such a blind eye to—the first of many warnings which went disregarded; almost as if Slade _wanted _me to figure out what he was doing before it happened but then—I think it would have been accurate to assume he _knew _I would do nothing to act upon these such warnings when he was seen purchasing a potion from the specialty shop

—what I would later learn was one of the active chemicals in the new nanoscopic probes he was using…

And I suppose that even though the past is not something that can be changed, and dwelling will do no good—had I listened to Thunder and Lightning and pursued Slade, had I, at least, wised up at investigated the Wilson/Jericho lead at Argent's urging, I might still be with my friends today. And their lives, it seems, would not be endangered now as they are thanks to my stupidity; and though hindsight does little more than damage the soul and send the mind into a helpless spiral of regret and all those stemming emotions, I would remember these few instances from this moment out and would think—_if only I had done something, where would we be?_

Often I try to focus on the future instead of these dark thoughts of remorse at my actions, but here in the present moment it is not much brighter—and so I'm left to wonder where my mind should be left so that I can avoid the pain of everything as much as possible; where, things not bright or darker, dullness rains upon the landscape and I take up my own _Avrretta_.

Though in this city—with so many places to hide, and yet one seems never to be invisible to the all-seeing eye which rules this city in the shadows. Because in my attempts to hide from this, what so belonged to me, I was more than ever in public opinion—and my cowardice was what would condemn those who were strong enough to wonder.

"Well—did he try to do anything to you?" Again—the skepticism rained. "Did you guys fight?"

Again, they exchanged quick, concerned glances before adapting an air of almost defensiveness, as if I was not on their side. "No," Thunder said slowly, calculatingly. "He—"

"We could only look at him for a moment before one of the carts going by blocked our view of him—and when it passed he was gone!" Lightning interrupted wildly; again, encompassing the very meaning of his name, as Thunder in his slow, seriousness.

As typical of me—"Guys, as much as I appreciate that you're keeping on your toes—unlike everyone else in there—I don't think that was Slade. If it was he would have attacked you."

"But maybe he wouldn't have!" Lightning said, noticeable getting worked up now. "Whatever he had bought it was worth a lot of money, Robin! The city has been trying to shut down those places for years on the charge that they sell illegal drugs!"

"_Do_ they?"

Again, the two of them looked to one another for a few long, speculative moments; Thunder looked at Lightning, his teeth clenched and body shaking in what seemed to be anger, with concern and quickly, after just a small moment, he calmed from his frustrated and defensive verve into sensibleness and too adapted this look of concern as the attention was fully turned upon me—and then Thunder walked up to me and put his hands on my shoulders. "Robin—Raven tells us that this Slade is very obsessed with you. If it is him—"

"Then we need to do something," Lightning said, also walking up to me and touching my arm with a very strange and practiced gentleness that alerted me to the fact that within the crazed, fun-obsessed Titan there was more of an understanding of the world than anyone could really grasp. "That potion—"

"_Look_," I said, and put a hand on both of them as reassurance—though there was that constant buzzing disinterest. "I appreciate how you're concerned—I really do. But if Slade comes back for me, I'll be ready—but for now I don't think it's worth our time to pursue this guy, because we don't know whether or not he's the actually Slade especially considering he didn't attack you."

"Maybe he didn't have to," Thunder said with eyes that seemed to droop in defeat, extreme sadness. "Maybe it wasn't part of his plan."

After a few moments of silence, Lightning slowly shrugged Thunder to the side and touched my shoulders, staring directly into my eyes with this air of seriousness—the concern and anger and sadness melding into this undiluted stroke of emotion; he squeezed my shoulders as he began to shake and whispered out, "The old one's eye…Robin, it seemed to _invite us to tell you_…he…may not have powers like ours but there is something within him that is just as formidable…and…I fear for your life if you let him do as he pleases…"

I had opened my mouth to say something, and though I'd like to think it was some assurance that I would make sure to heed there warning I'm sure it would have been another impartial and ignorant rebuttal so that I could go back into the room and meld back into the total ignorance of revelry until I ended up passing out in the early hours of the morning like the others, where thoughts of Slade were nonexistent—though the eye seemed to loom, as it always did…; when Kole exited the room where they were all gathered and approached us, this time, alone, as was not typical of her, usually hand in hand with her love or, in earlier days, side by side with her partner.

Her smile—though, perceptiveness allowed one to see it was little more than a façade to placate those she would not talk to—fell immediately as she sensed the vibes thrown off by our conversation—those being nothing like the party inside, consumed by a solemnity that matched better perhaps our fight with the Brotherhood of Evil, and she seemed so visibly disturbed by this vibe that she actually stopped in her tracks and held up her hands as apology.

"I'm sorry…I hope I'm not interrupting something?"

I shook my head. "No, you're fine, Kole. What's up?"

I noticed out of the corner of my eye Lightning and Thunder exchanging their glances; these consumed by unending sadness and a greater sense of defeat, and of course not without their constant concern, but they said nothing.

She walked up to me slowly, until she was close enough where she could speak in this tone she had adapted of quiet sadness and concern—something anything but new to me now—which dulled it into almost being barely inaudible; clasping her hands against her legs, hunched over but looking up at me with wide, sparkling eyes, which I could tell were just scarcely containing tears. Her lip quivered as she murmured shakily, just barely being able to form the words, "Robin—"

Sensing her alarm, I reached out and hugged her, and as I did she began to cry. "What's wrong, Kole? What's up?"

When she continued to cry without saying anything, I realized that whatever was going on, it wasn't going to be a quick fix; and so still holding her I turned back to Thunder and Lightning and looked at them warily.

"Can we…?"

They both nodded, without hesitation. "Of course, Robin," Thunder said, seeming to understand that we needed to be alone—that, like I did, Kole would not talk if they were standing near. However, they both seemed disturbed—and holding a sense of defeat, knowing they had not accomplished what they needed to and therefore could not rest completely until they had, and in this way they seemed emanate a sense of spiraling hopelessness if only in the eyes, which were calm but possessed depths of cold understanding.

"Can we talk again?" Lightning said, looking seriously at the two of us as we stood there embracing. "Please, Robin—we believe this is very important."

"Sure," I said quickly to dismiss them though it held no truth to it. "Anytime."

And so slowly they left, Lightning touching my shoulder briefly before he exited and looking at me with the same serious look—that concerned and deflated knowing, which seemed to drag one's sense of mind down into the depths of an ocean of quicksand; in a word, disheartening.

We never did finish the conversation; in fact, that was the last time I would talk to the two of them privately or seriously before I encountered Slade yet again.

"Kole, what's wrong?"

Her dainty fingers, those which had endured cruel enemies and could slice through their flesh like it was butter, with anything but effort, now seemed to belong to a weak baby bird; they felt as though they could be broken with one simple, hateful snap, while the flesh shrank and fell away in pitiful recession, crumbling slowly like a decrepit statue. It was unlike any state I had ever seen her in as she pulled herself closer to me; the girl who was once a beautiful and strong ice princess, the girl who had fended for herself in the jungle the majority of her life, was clinging to me like I was her lifeline; the girl who, in recent days, had resolved to gain independence from "Nark," the adopted earth name which the creature took when Cyborg couldn't seem to pronounce the full one (that is, you could say to him, _Cyborg, it's_ G-nark. Guh-nark. And he could say "Guh" and "Nark" separately but when he tried to put them together it was just _Nark_, though we figured he was trying to mess with us more than anything after realizing how much it bothered us, so we stopped buying into it and adopted the name, too). Kole—who, upon the urging of Argent, would later adapt the alias Trope—began to practice using her powers without becoming totally still, in turn meaning that Nark would not need to shadow her; and what started as a way to avoid further confrontation with villains, specifically the Brotherhood of Evil who seemed to hopelessly encompass our attitudes still in that time, became quickly Kole's attempts to free herself from this strange bondage to the caveman; what, she would tell Raven and I as we helped her to isolate the crystal powers so that they could be directed to one singular part of the body, had once been a strong and treasured partnership became what began to feel to her as a cage which she could not free herself.

She described how, since meeting the Titans, and having a good understanding of how we worked as a team—not so dependent upon one another that, without the other, we would fall, but enough so that success seemed to be based on the unity of our group—she had been encouraged to adopt this mentality like Nark his new name. She said that Nark was demanding and often abusive; she told that she could get no time away from him because of his neediness, and the fact that, if she was not catering to his needs, he lingered around her still—and if she tried to get any alone time, he would often lash out at her, or accuse her that she did not love him. She said that she believed he thought after their years together, with she almost serving him, that he could take advantage of her in the ways that he was and she was fed up with it; and after having a talk with a strong and feminist-oriented, almost man-hating Jinx, she became determined to break free of whatever grip he had over her. And because we were her friends, we helped her as best we could with little questions asked; in those earliest days at the tower when it was still a hotspot of activity and seemed to be everyone's new home, Raven, Jinx, and Argent, and myself took on a sort of protective role of Kole as we finally helped her to formulate this new skill she desired—and we saw less of Nark as Jericho seemed to take an interest in our project with Kole. We began to recede slowly back as the mute but metaphysical and extremely empathetically-powered Jericho easily helped Kole to form her crystals around her hand—a deadly weapon which would work like a knife on the battlefield; later, he would resolve to help her develop these individualized crystals whenever she wanted and the two would often spend hours in the training room together working on this. We were impressed, but we were quick to note that once Jericho and Kole had achieved these crystals upon her hands, work slowed to a standstill and it became painfully obvious that they were very much attracted to one another, and were enjoying the excuse of their alone time—and even if I hadn't peeked in on one of their "training sessions" one day to see them engaged in a passionate kiss, and Jericho's fingers wandering gently over her chest, beginning to remove her dress, it wouldn't have been hard to have guessed, especially when, in the following days, we saw less of Kole as well.

I talked to her one day after I had seen them kissing, though I didn't disturb them or mention it—and I wouldn't. She seemed jubilant and confided in me only how much she loved Jericho—what she claimed to be a match clearly and confidently made; she told me how respectful he was to her, how considerate and soft, how, with his special powers, filled her mind with words of warmth and love. A flower he had picked for her was woven in her hair. She showed me a painting he had done of her as they sat in the grass together outside of the tower, and told me of a melody he played for her on his guitar. They were very much in love—and when met with this new and considerate substitute, Nark because so seldom seen we were left to wonder where he had gone, and if something had happened. And in his absence there was a confidence, a feminist attitude that resembled Jinx's or Argent's, a new respect built upon her along with this new understanding of love and Jericho. She became such a strong woman she rivaled Argent, who had, with her British accent and beautiful body, been the subject of men's eyes since her maturity, as she said; and in those days of laziness and sloppy ignorance, the most prevalent thing to the male Titans would be the dilemma of who would get the rights to ask her out, because their relationship, but to me, was kept a secret—and though not well, it didn't take much to fool some of the Titans… though within days of their intimacy, soon that was to change when the confidence had been stroked so thoroughly that when Speedy flexed his muscles and offered to show her his arrows and tricks she easily pushed him out of the way and paraded out of the room, saying, "Sorry, but I like Jericho's better."

And so with this confidence one would not expect to see her in such a strange and weakened state; when, having seen her only days before flaunting her new body's poise and making the guys leave their lips hanging stupidly open, in stunned silence, she should be clinging to me with tears streaming down her face as if she was begging for love; and yet, I could not form any opinions about such occurrences especially when I had adapted an attitude of total passiveness which seemed to encompass the entirety of my mind, and so maybe I was thinking frontwardly that these displays of emotion and concern from my friends—which would seemingly increase in the coming days—were just a residual excitement from our battle against the Brain and his fool-henchmen, Monsieur Mallah, who became later known as "DM" to the Titans, General Immortus, or "Jackson" and Madame Rouge—and who, coincidentally, we would not see the last of—,also adapting an alias of _Rubicund_ when she later spoke of escape but was known to the Titans solely as "Red." With their impressions still burned into our minds, I expected jitters; I expected tears and fanatical assumptions and hallucinations, expected the Titans, especially Hot Spot, who was without hesitation to say a complete mess, to be sure that they saw Red lurking in the corner—or were wondering silently whether everyone in the room was really who they said they were. On at least one occasion, I found myself looking troubled at Hot Spot, my head tilted, wondering—_is that bitch in there somewhere? _But nothing would come of this for a while.

So I was not judging—and was rather uncaring, not in the sense that I didn't _care _but more uninterested—believing strongly that nothing _would _come of these happenings. In those weeks I think I was very distant from the world. I think the real Robin, the outward and analytical Robin would have spent hours on the Slade lead given to me by Lightning and Thunder—would have thought more about what I would learn from Kole and Jericho that night. And yet looking back upon those weeks I think I had become so numbed by the Brotherhood of Evil and all that they meant to us—how _dark _this time became—I thought very little of these so-called problems back home; because after being flash-frozen and witnessing my entire team be taken down one by one by this horrible group, the ideas of trouble within our group, or outer forces like Slade, who, in comparison to the senseless and heartless Brain, seemed like a petty thief and became more to me as an antihero who I would see little of in the future—and right there can be seen my entire mistake of those weeks. Underestimating and petty disconnection—the idea that if I closed my eyes, all of it would go away. Like a child.

"It's Jericho," she gasped, closing her eyes and forcing the tears out in longer and thicker streams. "There's something wrong with him, Robin!"

And indeed there was something wrong with Jericho on that night. Outside the tower it was a beautiful night; the air was reminiscent of the cool summer air and with a soft breeze, and Jericho and Kole had been sitting on the rocks looking out at the city lights while Jericho played his guitar a little. Kole would tell me that she had commented to Jericho how beautiful the lights were, and how his song seemed to draw out that beauty; she said she told Jericho that the song sounded as if it could blend into the wind and expressed amazement at his oneness with the world and the universe. Jericho seemed to be off-put by this—or something, Kole did not know—and he stopped playing his guitar. She asked him what was wrong but he took her hand and they looked at the city lights and he did not answer her; but when they heard the screech of an engine on the mainland and the peeling of wheels against the concrete, one which was distant and should have been relatively unimportant, Jericho collapsed in what seemed to be pain over his guitar, and, as she told it, her mind was filled with the image of an ominous war general and his glittering gray eyes.

"I don't know what was happening," she would tell me, tears streaming down her face at an even steadier rate, like two small waterfalls. "I just saw this man—and I don't know how, because I never saw him before in my life. I don't know if Jericho was doing it but—he must have been because it feels that way when he talks to me. But this man—" she shook her head, shutting her eyes and again pushing out more tears. "I didn't know him but it almost felt like I _did._ Like I could _feel _him—like he was there or he was part of my life! He was so vivid, Robin! This man, I was sure he was standing there because I saw every part of him so clearly! He looked like one of the hunters who sometimes stumbled into the underworld—like he had been through one of your wars. He was covered in dirt and oil and wearing that camouflage and he had this wild armor—and he almost looked like a robot but he had the most _beautiful eyes_! They were gray but they were beautiful and direct and deep—and they reminded me of Jericho's. And he had such a beautiful, young face. His reminded me of Jericho's also. They looked so much alike. The only difference was that he was older and his hair was just a little darker and he had a little bit of a beard. And I don't know what to think, Robin!—

_The thought burned and was hot like a fire. Pain. Ominousness about it. Something bad to come._

When the thought had gone, Kole saw that Jericho was staring back at the city lights with his mouth hanging open and his eyes watering, eventually to meld into tears. She said that he was shaking violently and no matter what she did or said, he would not take his eyes off the city; she asked him many times, she said, what was wrong, what had happened, and what she had seen, but her mind was from then on blank, and he would not speak to her at all. "It didn't even seem like he was _there_," she told me shakily, as I hugged her and held her like a good friend, yet detached. She would bring him inside the tower and to the guest room where he was sleeping while he stayed there with us, though too detached, like I; and when she had finished telling me this, this was where we went, too—

And when we entered, we saw Jericho packing his belongings and strapping his guitar onto his back.

No amount of persuading would change his mind. With little more than a mysterious and incomplete goodbye, he left that night and from that moment on, there was a change about the place which seemed to have begun with his absence; soon, we saw little of the once confident and once so cherished girl named Kole until she became nearly non-existent to us, and one morning we woke to find that Harold and Argent, too, had taken their leave.

And things were never the same as an emptiness encompassed the tower; and sooner than later, we watched as the rest of our guests, who we thought we detested so much in their presence alone, became an aching and empty hole in our hearts when only the original Titans, Jinx, Kid Flash, and convert Gizmo, (who, after escaping the flash-freezing of our enemies with the help of future Titan Billy Numerous [who king-of-nicknames Cyborg would simply call "The Kid"], who would join a few days before I was captured by Slade, had come to the tower on the day we arrived back in the city; he had come to apologize to Jinx and to tell her that he and Billy planned to break the Headmaster out of jail so that they could rebuild their home—though he told us when we watched on warily that they didn't have anything evil planned; and consequently to invalidate this as an excuse to commit a crime, or maybe simply to save Gizmo, Jinx simply said, "Then why even break him out of jail?—you can live here," to which she quickly added when Gizmo looked at her in disbelief, "Don't worry—Robin's cool." And so under some pretty intense peer pressure and the idea that I might be keeping a criminal in prison and the city a little bit safer, Gizmo [later, one of my nicknames as I grew more fond of him which stuck, "Giz"] thus became an ordinary part of our lives at the Tower) remained in the tower, though in the recent days we had seen less of them, (though when Cinderblock had shown his face the four of them had been ready to fight, though we—_I_, mostly—convinced them that it was something we could handle on our own), and suddenly we were missing the destruction of our stuff, the hijacking of our tower, the endless party—the warm and bright innocence and light-hearted nature it had had. The blissful ignorance creating a safety where for those two weeks I resided comfortably like a warm bed and didn't come out of once even in all these such instances where that was all it might have taken to save me—and now, the realization that if I had perhaps explored Jericho, who I knew too little about but who would become such a large and ruminating part of my life, I might not be where I am today.

And yet—to learn anything about Jericho would be harder than I could imagine when the line between truth and lies told to me by the one who knew the most about him was non-existent. Indistinguishable.

Like Jericho.

0~0 0~0

_Forget him._

These—cold words uttered by my new "master" like a déjà vu from our past when my newest and only friend was he and the old ones were little more than an annoyance in the grandest scheme of things. I was supposed to _forget them_, but if that had happened our course now would be so much skewed—so how did he expect that to change now? How could he—as he had sat me back down on the bed, not allowing me to engage a fight because either that, too, would provide too much satisfaction or would perhaps lead to some harm (because he had told me it would be unfortunate should I have to make good on my threat of snapping his neck), and then slowly eased the suit, in all its dark glory—despite years of loneliness in this dark place with dust having that time to devour it, gleaming and new and seeming to emanate life and death all at once—into my lap. The bold and sharp S smirked up at me, still, waiting to encompass my very heart and soul and being very eager to do so as he repeated that incantation. The advice. To forget—

"_Robin_—the child vexes you more than I. Forget him, Robin."

My heart was racing—staring down at the gleaming S with wide eyes and an open mouth while my body shook and vibrated with the sensation of this knowledge, the horror it brought to my blackened and further blackening soul, the reflection of my past and how the new knowledge applied and affected the present and future. "Y-you had a _s-son_?" I stuttered, now gripping the suit and looking at that S until its image burned before my eyes like the mark of Scath upon Slade's forehead. Haunted by it, I repeated, like an incantation which would chase away demons, _"Y-you had a s-son?"_

"Why does this surprise you?" he said slowly, the eye raised and shining in something that seemed reminiscent of amusement mixed with growing concern. "It was not a secret—I never hid it from you. What is so surprising, little one? Didn't think I could get a pretty girl to lay down for me? _Didn't think I was human?"_

And yet I could only stare down at the letter, speaking the words while my mind tried to pull out one something else remotely sensible from the tornado of thoughts which had enveloped the place and made clear thinking, cohesiveness, and attentiveness not only impossible but almost silly-seeming if I could have thought that far or in-depth. And in these quick moments as my heart raced and my breath became rapid, as my body convulsed and my eyes were covered by the S which seemed to be propelled eternally into my very spirit, there became nothing but that S all that it had come to stand for, those emotions spiraling sensibility into blackness in a frenzied retreat. As this had come to increase I had lost sight of Slade; the bedroom; the suit itself until just that symbol remained; and soon all I knew was the S and the way my heartbeat seemed to amplify it with each pained and breath-taking beat. I was gripping my chest and did not know it.

I felt a needle thrust into my neck and a warm blackness came where thoughts were soft and there was only calm.

This—how blissful ignorance and his fabled forgetfulness finally came.

0~0 0~0

"You know, you worry me sometimes, Robin," I could hear Slade say, though it was far-away and muted as I laid there in his grip, half-asleep and listening to the sounds of cogs and gears slowly turning, melding with the voice to create a tone that to me became almost soothing. "You would think it would be enough to destroy me that you almost get yourself killed against these other criminals, or that you've got more woman wanting to steal away your youth and spirit than most—and yet you seem so intent to let these silly little nuances of mystery be the death of you. We're going to have to watch that.

"But…you have a lot of nice lady-friends, don't you, speaking on the subject of Joseph? You know if you didn't belong to me I would have said you'd be best to be finished off by one of your other enemies or this crazy heart of yours than any of these _women_," Slade was almost rambling, though I just barely heard it as it melded into the soothing white noise, while he was dressing me in the custom and grinning suit with his burning insignia, which still fit perfectly and seemed as it was put on me to be anything but years old; and as I lay there half-asleep, he dressed me in it as if he were a parent putting a typical pair of pajamas on their kid, continuing to speak almost absentmindedly as he did. Ignoring my grunts and little sounds of weak protest as my body was disturbed while he pulled on the suit and zipped it up so it was tight on me, he continued to speak slowly, thoughtfully, almost, like myself in those weeks or maybe in that moment right then, not really present there and because of this leaving an odd emptiness in the room which resonated and sounded: "Because—women can be quite cruel, my little one. And I worry when I see you with those girls—that you'll end up with some woman who will steal your money and waste your time and use your body. And—" he pulled the silver utility belt with his weapons with their own haunting letters around my waist and buckled it tightly, making me whine a little, "—unfortunately those kind are more common than you'd think. Something I found funny—the other day I saw Terra run from you when you tried to comfort her when you visited her little false reality, and yet she claims to love you. She's quite a fool if she thinks betraying you was the best way to pick you up." I heard a soft chuckle from within the mask as buckled the collar around my neck, and then proceeded with the bands for my arms, and again there was little I could do in that state of weakness I was enveloped by to protest but groan out my displeasure, to which he finally said, "Relax, Robin. It isn't so bad. You will learn to like it, in time. You're a handsome boy and you'll soon be glad I took you out of those awful rags you were made to wear so that _he _could look better in comparison to you. But _I _want you to feel good because that's when your strength is at its greatest—and you _know _you like how it looks."

"D-don't…t-talk…about him…that way…" I said softly as Slade led me back over to the bed and set me down and then pushed me so I lay before him passively, making me groan again in exhaustion, feeling like I had just climbed a mountain and then done a thousand pushups when I got to the top. I didn't know what it was; if it was the drug in the injection, the probes, my overall fatigue from the hurricane of emotions I experienced, or a combination of all three, but while it was enough to cripple me into submission while Slade dressed me I was not so far-gone that I would not defend the man who became like my father when he was being so blatantly insulted.

"Oh, hush, Robin…you hate him as much as I do." He clipped on the bands that went on my legs and like on my arms and every other part of the suit, made them tight and invasive as if to remind me and assure that I belonged to him and that I would do his bidding and that, above all, there was no getting out of this. Again ignoring my grunts he pulled out a shining and like new pair of boots and slipped them easily on my feet and buckled them.

"T-that's…n-not…true…" I mumbled helplessly, but feeling as though it were my duty to him to defend his honor, as Slade sat me up and pulled out a pair of sleek black gloves, which seemed in that low lighting and to my blurred vision and hazy brain to be a pair of hands which were the hands of Satan himself to reach into my very soul and to rip out the goodness and pureness and everything I had once stood for in one fell swoop; these, simply, were the hands that would define me in the coming days as a servant of Slade and ultimately the Devil and would possess stolen goods to destroy harmony and create disarray, and ultimately would ravage my friends, old and new. And as Slade stood beside me when we observed the destruction, that hand on my shoulder, these would lay at my sides, curled slightly as a symbol of submission and non-hostility toward my master which could be cultivated into adoration in time. And no matter how I protested—these hands would belong to me.

Because the hand commanding these was much too strong for me.

Gently, Slade took my hand and pulled the glove on, and it fit perfectly, caressing softly my fingers and making me feel somehow a feeling of horrible dread and at the same time security and safety in them, that these hands would always have one to meet them in times of hardship and pain and trying emotions. It seemed to feel even better when the band was clipped around the glove, making me feel that strange feeling of total refuge and the ability to disappear within the suit—within Slade. And when Slade did the same with the other hand—I will not lie in saying that for some strange and horrible reason, even in that state of groggy confusion and half-sleep, I realized that it was one of the best feelings I had experienced in the longest time—since things were brighter. And in that moment, they became so; as Slade finished clipping on the band on the other hand, his own lingered there and briefly caressed my hand, with such an uncharacteristic gentleness I became immediately transfixed and any defiance within me was immediately stomped out into the ground like a discarded cigarette butt; and I stared into that eye, glowing in the low light of the bedroom as he caressed my hand and made me feel in that moment that I was where I was meant to be—and made me suddenly want to serve him and to please him like I had once done for my father.

"My little one," he said softly, staring back at me so intently, the gray eye drawing me into its light as it sparkled with that intent, inviting me to fall into the gaze and to explore there; provided me with that same safety I felt from the hands and that touch. "You, my little one, belong to me now—and I would be willing to bet that in time you will see me as the father he never was. You _will _grow to like this in time and you will stop resisting—and you will learn to like _me_ because unlike _him _I think you can be my _son_ rather than my _servant_. You will see, in time."

"You…already…have a son…" I said slowly, still staring into the eye, mesmerized. This hand was slowly and gently, just slightly, rubbing my own.

And I watched the eye narrow. "You mean the little ingrate who I lost my eye for? The uncaring boy who disowned me for fighting a war I wanted no part in? The reason I slaved in a factory for years to come home to criticism and hostility? _That I wasn't making enough money? That I wasn't a good father even though I threw my life away at twenty-three for him?..._He may be my son, Robin—but if I wanted him, would he be categorized with your poor other friends as subjects for my probes? Would he be reassurance for _you_?—and, my little one, if you had a father would you have been alone for all these years? Would you have had to constantly prove yourself to everyone to show that you didn't need him? And would you be here with me?"

The hand stroked mine and the eye gleamed as I stared into it; and the words slid out easily as I lingered in my haze: _"No, Slade…"_

The eye briefly sparkled as he stared back at me, slowly removing his hands and reaching down onto the bed where rested a new mask, with its exaggerated shape of the eyes to match Slade's one single, now comforting like a warm lighthouse on a haunted sea. "That's right, my good little boy," he said, as he brought the mask up to my eyes and slowly and gently smoothed it down, the hands practiced and calculated in their every slightest movement—hands which seemed, in that moment, to be the most reliable to trust with one's life. And I didn't flinch as he put it on me; I didn't even close my eyes. And when my identity was now hidden behind Slade and his hands lingered at the sides of my face, similarly beginning to caress there as we swapped our gazes. "Look at you," he said very softly, and for a moment, if just in my sleepy haze in that one moment, no longer was this man Slade with his cold and dark history; but he was the young and idealistic, Bohemian-type unwilling general with a smooth face and bright eyes, and hair that was young. And in that moment, I was sure he was smiling at me beneath the mask—for once being so vulnerable and readable that in that moment, again, if just in the haze, he seemed like an actual person with an actual soul—seemed, almost, to be my father. My _real _father.

Forgetfulness. Blissful Ignorance. The sleepy haze and that needle forever became my escape into a world where the eye seemed good and the man with that one eye could have been my father; where the hands were commanding and all-knowing but comforting as their safety trumped knowledge for a more wakeful Robin.

And the needle would soften the S into a reminder of what this S could give me, ultimately, when the head-strong and retro Robin had been beaten and robbed of its integrity and was left in cold reality and unbridled, raw emotions which that Robin had tried so hard to hide.

I wanted a father.

In the haze it became easy—but when I woke up darkness crept swiftly back in as light retreated; polluted by ideas of where I was and who I was and Jericho. Jericho. The retro Robin thought of Jericho in wakeful hours until what could have been was wrecked like chemicals to pure water.

Jericho.

* * *

Author's Note:

Okay I actually survived the picture thing-but I will tell you this. I slept with the picture under my pillow and in all honesty-not even lying her, this is balls to the wall serious-it is something I will never forget nor will I do again. I wrote some of this on Sunday and the majority of this tonight, after eating a bunch of pizza and chocolate lava cake and then drinking like eight diet cokes and a Monster at around midnight after I finished watching Zombie land when it was on TV. If I gave more of a shit I might have done a crossover where Slade was Tallahassee and Robin was Columbus and then we got some bitches in as the two stupid girls, but blah, I don't really give a dead moose's last shit. So basically that was my night, now, I did not go to sleep and right now have a coffee and a muffin. Have to go to school in like four hours-oh bob saget!

Anyway, please review the story, let me know what ya think. Until then, a quick, I GIVE A DEAD MOOSES SECOND TO LAST SHHT skit with Robin and Slade since there ain't no way in gd hell that I'm gonna fall asleep now. **lol you guys better pitty me cause I pretty lame for what I bout to do.**

If you didn't see that moooovie on tv last night then you'd better not read this damn thing:

Slade: okay Robin. Goddamn it, we need to find some f##king twinkies or I'm gonna get really pissed off.

Robin: K (starts doing some squats)

Slade: what the f#ck is wrong with you. there's a twinkie truck right the hell over there.

Robin: just limbering up

Slade: lions aint limber up when dey chase the gazelle

ROBIN: I LIKE THE SCENE WHERE CHRISTIAN DANCES WITH SATINE IN MOULIN ROUGE I WANT TO DO THAT WITH STARFIRE

Slade: this is like what happened to the penguins in the north pole.

Robin: (30 seconds)...there are no penguins in the north pole...

Slade (30 seconds)...you want to see how hard I can hit?

AT THE TWINKIE TRUCK

Slade busts open the truck and a bunch of snowballs fall out

Slade: HOLY S**** (starts stamping on the snowballs)

Robin: I like snowballs

Slade: (30 seconds later) You're an ass****

Later ON AT A GIFT SHOP

Robin is trying on some perfume

Slade: Lancôme Maginifique?

Robin (angry face)... b*****

Slade: you wanna do Raven. that's fine cause she's doing us.

Robin: *sprays him on the back of the head with Lancôme*

Slade whips around 0-0

Robin: Let me start my three part apology by saying that you are a really great person

Slade: shoves Robin into a vase OH BOB SAGET

LATER ON AT BOB SAGETS MANSION (tehheee)

Slade: well I've never been really good at goodbyes so-that'll do pig.

Robin: -_- drives off into a bush on his motorcycle.

**HEheheh yeah...ohh god I need to get a life! is this all ive amounted to? starts crying.**

Im gonna go watch Moulin rouge.


	6. Mutual Company--

Mutual Company-The Hit List and Lingering Fire

In the days that would come Jericho's past would be no better discovered—and he would quickly be weighted with Slade's hatred toward his late wife, Rosemary. But for the time being, in that cold darkness of the place where it seemed I was condemned to spend the rest of my life, I was made to forget about Jericho singularly and to focus on what really seemed to be the most pressing matter at hand; and no longer was Jericho outstanding from the sad group he had been unfortunately categorized in when it came to keeping me in line—and, in fact, while some of those Titans pounced out in my mind Jericho somehow would not show his face no matter how prevalent and important he would seem to me and my situation, and instead I would find more attention focused on the "ladies" as Slade's hatred of Rosemary and her surviving daughter, Rose, seemed to bleed into his affairs with those who he was not related to; and soon I found myself the subject of many anti-women campaigns like Jinx's feminist reign against men around her. And most prevalently in the days to come, I would learn that family ties to Slade were little more than non-existent; and I would learn that these could not such be used against him.

I began to quickly equate Rosemary and Rose—who would adapt the name _Ravenger_, or "Rave" to me—with being an epitome of evil when the drugs which I found to rule my brain and thusly my universe took hold and I found myself in that same transfixed haze which left me feeling like there could be some safety in Slade. What once had been a woman-hungry and—mostly Slade-detesting, and willful in that way, teenager became a like a loyalist to the king and with quite a set of sexist and strong-headed beliefs reflecting these, soaked into my brain by these constant lectures by my new "master" as he would forcibly assert himself as in the coming days; what had never came to fruition as my friends burst in and challenged Slade now had made its comeback and possessed undiluted force and a bright and unwavering light so that it seemed impossible to skirt around or ignore. In fact when drugged at my fullest, having the needle just seeped into my flesh with its mystery liquid and having Slade draw his pipe with its special "good stuff" to my lips to further push me into that soothed and compliant state, I could have adopted a holocaust-like attitude toward those who wronged Slade and only in their defeat it seemed could I find peace; and so ultimately three people came into mind when I lingered here, with Jericho again nowhere to be found while life went on in this way (with Slade's lists also having an absence in Jericho); and I would not rest until I had done his bidding.

Rosemary Wilson: deceased—charge unknown to me.

"Ravenger" Rose-Ann Queen: Gotham with connections to a man named Oliver John—charge unknown to me.

Oliver John Queen: unknown—charge unknown—

shrouded in the darkest of mystery which would not be penetrated so quickly in the coming days.

_Wishful thinking_.

There also became a hit-list which lingered with me here; Slade's enemies with connections so unfortunately familiar to me and to what I had done had I been thinking while the high prevailed; these, all more forthcoming with information, and yet would still adapt an air of mystique and an unwillingness in Slade to reveal what lay at the center of our universes and should have been bluntly apparent, yet skirted around by one another seemed otherwise easily avoided. "Brother" Sebastian Blood: stolen technology; attempted murder. The Hive-Five: betrayal; attempted murder; stolen technology. Carnaby-Neil Richards—"Mad Mod": torture; stolen technology; attempted murder. Indie "Anaxe-Herre" Tarris—"Control Freak": stolen technology; harassment. Val Yor/Valor: interference/unknown otherwise to me. Terra-"Avrretta Jade" Markov: betrayal, attempted murder. God Trigon: betrayal; attempted murder; destruction of property/manipulation; torture/manipulation; betrayal; dishonesty. God Trigon-Arella: harboring traitor. Raven-Unknown: Use/manipulation; attempted murder; interference. Garfield Logan "Beast Boy": attempted murder; interference (these two otherwise also unknown to me). The Brotherhood of Evil/The Brain/Baron Tenkai-Talbot Jackson-Unknown—"General Immortus"/Madame Jeune Débauché—"Madam Rouge"/ "Lady Red": attempted murder; stolen technology; harboring traitors; manipulation/torture; unknown to me.

And a host more, yet these became the main and most frequently brooded upon by the solitary and frightening man named Slade. Like my friends, they became another list in Slade's revamped computer, which he had rebuilt upon his return to earth and life with even more of a hatred and bias than he had had before. What he wanted, exactly, from these "villains" I would scarcely know; and not even in my most conscious and clear-headed of states could I unearth what, more specifically, was the cause of his anger. Virtually all of the names meant nothing to me in terms of Slade; while some were familiar, such as Beast Boy and Raven and Terra and it could be reasonably inferred why revenge was ideal, some of them left me feeling like I had been in a coma for a year straight and had woken up to destruction and fire all around—

_Brother Blood?_

_Mad Mod?_

_The Brotherhood of Evil?_

_Control Freak?_

_Arella—who even _was _this?_

But mostly—

_Rosemary._

_Ravenger._

_Oliver John._

Again—_wishful thinking._

And it became, in time, hard to tell whether or not these charges, all senseless, or so I would believe at first glance, were chalked for myself, or were meant to apply to what had been done to him or someone else…but ultimately when it came down to it, these names and ideas would become the epicenter of my being with Slade and, at the heart of it, a whirlwind of trying tasks and emotions stemming from those tasks to cloak a greater and more inconceivable idea between us. A change brought in me as my life changed, too.

The computer itself also became a large part of my life as the time would progress. In fact, that night after Slade had dressed me—when we had had that odd, first really "emotional," if such is a good way to put it, moment between the two of us as he smoothed the mask on and looked at me in that way with that one silver eye—I would come in contact with the computer in the worst way; the way which would affirm to my horror the reality of it all and convince me, finally, for the first time, I think, that truthfully there was no escaping where I had landed now. This would happen ultimately after having come out of the drug haze injected by the winking needle, and would lead to the first open protest I would give Slade in regards to the position in question, and where, for the first time, the mechanics of the whole scheme would finally be revealed to me to further affirm the fate. I considered it a crucial moment as in that moment it felt crucial and I acted accordingly; perhaps as if I was truthfully believing that anything I could do would change or sway the outcome of myself and my friends, old and new, doomed by my stupid actions.

I woke up in frigidity; not from a dream, and not from any sense of foreboding—but with a chill encompassing my body that derived from some outside source. What had been a restful and black sleep was sliced with a knife like snowy winter icicles to draw me from my sleep and back into the real world, where I lay in the bed, still dressed in my uniform, but now covered with a blanket which did nothing to compensate for the temperature; immediately upon opening my eyes I saw my breath rising from my mouth in long, drawn out streams like I was smoking something deeply. I felt internally chilled and realized immediately I was shaking in that horrid cold where life was easily felt but detested—where there was no hiding from what was the truth. Lulled to sleep by warm ignorance to be woken by cold reality: the high had worn off and I sat up as I began to gain some of my memory back of where I was.

What had happened after or during Slade's sort of holding me the way he was after dressing me, I don't really remember; and in that moment there was definitely trouble comprehending it especially when the cold bit me as it did. I sat up and rubbed my head tiredly; the gloves still caressing my fingers but now providing no comfort were painful and numb simultaneously and bending them as they ran through my hair was a feat in itself. Inside the new boots my toes were similarly frozen; my head was aching dully, and there was a stiffness about the entirety of my body that seemed to meld with the chill and easily encompass me. I moaned out my discomfort and used the other hand to rub my thighs which were cold and tight like a corpse's, and with the other I gripped the back of my head, wondering silently my disorientation; the cold, the old high, the atmosphere, all seemed to create a perfect storm which made all this physical pain ache so prevalently I wanted to just end it all then and there, because I found no safety anywhere, and in no escape from the pain I slowly leaned forward and vomited onto the floor, moaning as I did, tasting bile alone because there was nothing in my stomach any longer, my last meal having been some of Beast Boy's tofu hotdogs which I had eaten for lunch that day—however long ago it was—though arguably it was better to not have tasted a second time around. I threw up more than once and crumpled over in the pain of that, clutching my stomach because it was all I could do, my body buzzing with this overwhelming sensation of pain until it became too much to handle; and quiet came quickly, somehow, and I found myself in numb thankfulness as I lay back down on the bed and closed my eyes again, still shaking in the cold but overloaded by what I had felt previously that it seemed not to matter, though unconsciously I was tugging the blanket back around my body and pulling it tightly around me to draw out the chill.

And when I was here and dulled enough to wonder, one question prevalently flashed before my eyes as I lay here in a daze, my mouth open and drool dripping from it in the aftermath of my sickness: _what the _hell _is going on right now? _

Not that there was actually much of a question, when it came down to it; because in total honesty I think the knowledge of where and who and what I would become always lingered in my mind, if in the back most corner. Maybe the vomiting just provided for a nice cover for that cold knowing, what ultimately bound me to pain and the misfortune of understanding itself—the implications it proposed. But the last time I woke to physical sickness was the morning of my parents' funerals, when the images of wreaths and dark wood and gray skies over the vivid green fake turf of the cemetery reigned supremely in my mind—and so naturally, I could be at least credited slightly for my confusion, mostly wondering how, in Slade's presence, let alone while he gripped me and looked at me with that odd mysterious expression, I could have gone off to dreamland so easily. The larger idea of my drugging lingered as I lay there, shivering in the frigid air; as the memory of the needle and its penetration of me loomed, I understood my actions, if could even be called that, were not to be prevented, inevitable; and I understood that it was not a judgment of my own character or morals—and yet anger, abhoration, took my mind and created a storm of its own, where the idea of sinking claws and feet into Slade could not have seemed better; as if the sickness, the cold, and the memories all flooded together to drown me in this feeling of need; the feeling to act if only to satisfy that property and not to satisfy the smarter, retro Robin.

In short—I wanted to fight Slade. Badly. No matter how stupid it was—considering.

And without hesitation it seemed I did not care that I had just vomited my guts out of my mouth (and, in turn, did not consider why, or care, hold any forward concern, really, if it lurked, of course), or that I was weak and sore, or that my body was so encompassed by frigidity my teeth chattered hopelessly, I made myself rise from the bed and slowly, quickly as I did, I threw the blanket off my shoulder and clamored up, where it was harsher, and made me feel as though I'd emerged from a safe cave and into a wilderness bitten with winter. I could see my breath again, emerging from me in the same smoke-ring type fashion; and the trickles of stray vomit on the suit, the new, shining S, had hardened in the cold, frozen on my face and neck, disgusting me as I wiped with the back of my gloved hands, where a phantom IV prick moaned beneath them, healed instantly by the good probes; and this small tingle, the alerting of what had been and how it had gone and what that implied and reaped forth in my mind only furthered the drive to attack Slade if so helplessly and carelessly. In that instant I would remember how he had tricked my friends, would remember how he had dealt with my body like it belonged to him, how he had dressed me like that was his to decide what I wore. It was an understatement to say this upset me; no matter how my physical body moaned for repose, thoughts tendered a rage which was worse than when the girl named Terra flaunted herself about with Slade; the girl, who, Raven would later recount, had mocked her and laughed as she tried to finish her off. Now—this seemed irrelevant.

And left more room for forgiveness and a need, for completion, to aspire…

I stood. Black boots tapped softly on the cold metal floor, which groaned and responded to the sudden weight on its stiffness. Strange shifting was heard beneath the floor as I stepped, the gears and cogs, turning and clicking, while the ground worked to process what I proposed like an overloaded computer. I stepped around the vomit and grimly continued to wipe myself of the result of my seemingly irrelevant sickness and walked from the room, slowly and arduously but with an unending confidence and determination which made my step easy and sure; and without hesitation I threw the door of the bedroom open and the sound of that echoed throughout the place, hollowly but loudly, like an organ hastily pressed in the emptiness of an abandoned cathedral. And standing in the doorway, I clenched my gloved hands so tightly I felt pain in my palms, callouses being opened and torn. I stared out at the place as I stood there, and I felt stupid and thoughtless, instinctual, rage burn within me.

"Slade," I said slowly, and similarly the room reverberated with my voice and the cogs and gears seemed to turn and respond, like they had been made fearful by my presence; and the name bounced and lingered hauntingly about the place, only further reminding me of my predicament, its implications, hateful knowledge. Angered, "I'll shove this thing down your throat!"

My hand lingered on the S over my heart.

I seemed to snap out of the haze when there came no response to my threats; and after the name faded I was left with that haunting and forever lasting sound of the cogs and gears as they wound and turned and remained lurking with stealthful silence. And it was then that I realized the darkness about the place—and realized that the darkness was not only implied and created by spirit, but was real and looming. Where lights had once been was darkness, and even in my bedroom, where the light had illuminated the glinting S, darkness was ignored and pushed aside by my anger. The only thing that remained illuminated was the screen—the computer which would so manage my life in the days to come; and the only other source of light became that thrown by a strange array of headlamps, flashlights, candles, and industrial battery-powered lanterns. And one would think that these things would at least neutralize the cold, would think that the candles, like those which we had complained to Raven more than once were causing global warming, would at least provide some heat in that drab place; but of course there was no relief here, even as I took in the dim scene and was reminded briefly of nights the Titans had spent together watching horror movies and then, too anxious to go to sleep, staying up all night and playing cards by candle-light, seeing which of us would be the first to scream out their pent up horror of the film we had just watched (and Beast Boy usually took this).

But those nights were anything but cold.

Arguably, there were not enough of them to warm the place, but then, in comparison to the hatred of their flicker it should have generated enough heat to at least touch me where I had been sleeping. I noticed a strangeness about the place which, in further introspection would only strengthen my remembrance of Raven and everything she stood for and we had done together in our special connection which had been established on that night so long ago and so seemingly far away. When Raven meditated the heat of the candles she burned was strong, and, in proximity to one, with the hand lingering more than a foot from each, a burn still could be achieved. And yet the room was enveloped by such stark cold, always, as she meditated and repeated those words so familiar to me—_Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos—Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos_—and with each word, making the candle's flame to flare brighter and larger but simultaneously cooling and chilling the room to a winter-like climate. I could only assume it was feng-shui which she achieved through this in her meditation; and yet it would not cease to unnerve me, especially because, in relation to everything else, she had only begun to do it after she'd defeated her father—and I didn't know whether or not to put it from my mind and think nothing of it, or to wonder, seemingly hopelessly, if it might be some source for alarm—and yet, in this night, I would look back on my decision and wonder if perhaps the process by which she meditated was more than just a new fad or acquired trick, because—

Slade's place felt like it too.

Briefly I was reminded of the dream which had encompassed my sleep when I had first passed out in Slade's presence and before me flashed the vision of Raven and Slade together, burning the field, the three eyes glowing, begging for a fourth to complete their hateful and powerful nature in that feng-shui—and with knowledge that the eye would not come from Slade, whose right was dead and gone and shrunken and—Rosemary. The name stood prevalent in my mind and before my eyes for a moment, and with the briefest but most ending passion and relevance than anything else. The candle I fixed my eye upon in that moment seemed to signify this name; images of a military tent and reading late at night, later a chapel, passion lit in the darkness of a cold bedroom, candles encompassing the very birth of a forthcoming child. I was horrified when, for the briefest of moments but like the name of the most undying clarity that it was upturning of my human natural and all I believed, I suddenly felt very connected to Slade; a new connection which, I knew certainly in the moment remembering Raven and Slade and having been provoked upon by the name Rosemary, was not limited to our fragile lives but which would continue into the future and eternity and would encompass the flames of Hell to create a bridge with which would serve to never separate us. In the flames as I stared I saw Jericho burning—his vocal cords disintegrating as he cried out for his mother in the unending darkness, where there was no heat of the fire. And four coffins would lay beside one another, yet empty beneath the headstone of (unspecified to me, blurred to the point it was not clear), allowing for () to walk away and to leave a trail of fire burning soft fields and fake cemetery grass and that of battlefields, scarred as the boy clawed at the edges of his coffin, struggling to resurrect himself; and this connection was forever made true as he writhed and the nameless man drew upon the delicate powers of the blue haired girl and made candle flames rise, drawing me to them like a helpless insect, and—

"Robin—did I hear you _threaten me?_"

The vision was gone, and so the connection, and I was again just staring at a regular candle, a simple wax one which seemed to be like those in emergency kits, unlike some which Raven had, which were shades of color and possessed interesting designs or scents, which she used for certain rituals or spells. I remembered briefly, but this time with little emotion or relevance as my mind fixed itself upon the glowing eye which now lingered before me, when Raven and I had meditated with one another only a week or so before this new incident, I had asked her if finally I might be able to do a ritual with her, which she had denied me even since the incident with her father; and though she seemed hesitant, she finally unearthed a purple candle and lit it. She told me to hold her hands across it and I did—and needless to say, it happened quickly and I understood little of it. In fact, like an anesthetic, I seemed to have slipped out of consciousness for that period of time and into a region of fuzzy gray, where thoughts were void. And yet I remember when we were done the candle, which had big to start with, in the seemingly small amount of time had reduced to a small pile of wax with a wick drowning within; and the wax had turned a dark brown, mingled with black and gray. She had seemed disturbed, but when I asked her what it meant, she was very vague and banished me quickly from the room. I had only been able to uncover after limited internet research that a purple candle was meant to exile evil before Gizmo and Cyborg had almost beat each other up as the result of a video game and had had to break it up.

And all I can affirm is that, if the ritual accords to now, then the purple candle, to banish evil, did not work.

"Did I hear you threaten me, Robin?"

Slade stood before me, illuminated only vaguely in the low lighting cast by the dripping white candle, flickering in a breeze that penetrated the place. His arms were crossed, and he stood, looking down at me with clear expectation shining in that one eye, narrowed in anticipation of my answer. He obviously seemed not to be pleased at the current moment, quite a change from his demeanor before I'd fallen asleep, when he had seemed almost as if he could kiss me from the ecstasy he felt from seeing me once again dressed like him. I could tell beneath the mask the face was scrunched up, and I noted dimly a tapping foot on the cold concrete floor of the place. Metal gears and cogs turned and threw slinking and creeping shadows over him, in the strange twilight evoked by skylights within the ceiling, projecting the world above with little more than passing interest, but which told it was early morning, very early. And horribly, his shadow was thrown across the terrain and seemed to encompass me; and for a moment, he seemed huge and menacing, and called to me immediately to step down and to do everything I could to stay on his good side; but when the clouds shifted and shadows changed, I regained my strength and confidence, and, the visions already forgotten, I remembered the kindled hatred of everything Slade encompassed—and I was made ready to act upon it.

"What did it sound like?" I sneered at him, too crossing my arms to mimic him and drawing my eyes up in an angry glare. "You think this is going to be like last time?"

He took a step toward me immediately, and it took everything in my power not to stagger back as he came horribly close to me, so much so that when he leaned down to meet my eye level I could feel his breath on my skin. "In fact I do, young man—except for the fact that this time, you won't get out so easily. In fact, you won't get out at all unless you wish death upon everyone you know. You seem to have forgotten how this works."

"I didn't forget anything," I snapped, and straightened up, so that my own face was now just as close to his as he was to mine, invasively, no matter how much it disgusted me or how uncomfortable I was immediately made. "I didn't forget how much I hate you, or how much of a moron you are and always will be. I didn't forget how not only couldn't you win anyone over without screwing it up, but how you couldn't even _make _them stay with you. I didn't forget how pathetic you are, Slade."

He slapped me, and it hurt, a lot; a residual sting left upon my right cheek, a swollenness that would come later but immediately heal, I felt a soft trickle of blood slip down my cheek and begin to pool in the crook of my neck as I stood there still, my feet grounded, for I would not allow myself to fall though the impact would have been hard enough to knock anyone else off of their feet; and slowly, the anger built and tried until I could no longer stand it to sit by idly, I turned my head back to look at him, with what I could feel was perhaps one of the most hateful glares my eyes had ever taken the trouble to form. My fists clenched immediately as the two of us locked our gazes, his softened a little at first because he perhaps felt badly for what he had done and did not expect what I did next as I hissed out, without any hesitation, my breath drawn into a low growl, "You bitch."—and for the first time in forever, I finally, _finally_, drove my fist into his stomach, which of course he hadn't seen coming, because it sent him flying backwards and into the wall behind him, the motion of that snuffing out candle flames and his impact damaging several flashlights and lanterns so light became immediately even more scarce within the room. There was the brief shattering of glass before a silence, in which I heard a few bats taking flight to the rafters, stirred by the commotion, and this sound echoed like the name hollowly within the room. And then—

Glass falling and the shifting of a body.

Slade stood up, slowly, the pieces tumbling from his body and shattering further against the ground when they fell. He looked at me and I saw that there was a small trickle of blood running from beneath his mask and similarly dripping down and splattering against his gleaming tech. The eye was fixed into a glare I could only find from the experience of the first time I had ever actually injured Slade, breaking his mask in half when I had slammed him onto the ground the first time I fought him as his apprentice. In a word, it was vehement, and portrayed that violence in the eye as what he mostly likely would have preferred to be a painting of my future, bloody and broken as payment for drawing his blood. And like last time, he, too, had drawn his voice into a low and just barely controlled growl, trying to keep himself from leaping at me and attacking, and I could tell, as he said, _"You're going to wish you hadn't done that."_

I looked at him, and mimicked almost instinctively that rage shining in the eye as it glared uncaringly at me, now seeming to say, _You've done it, boy, no sympathy from me_, and this was only furthered when I hissed out, "I still wish I would have done it sooner, Slade! I should have finished you off when you were a helpless, desperate corpse. I hate you and I'll wish until the day I die that I would have killed you when I had the damn chance!"

I was sure, upon everything in my belief, that he would charge that me; was sure, that, in a matter of seconds, I would be lying on the ground beneath his feet and looking death in the face; and yet that moment would not come, at least not yet under the circumstances. He instead approached me slowly and steadily, his hands clenched tightly at his sides as he strode in that calculated way he had adapted; and I watched as blood dripped and pooled, and, horribly, his eye seemed to grow red as it became apparent from where the blood originated, and it would appear that he was crying tears of the sticky crimson; and that sight knew no bounds of terror with which to possess me, instantly, to make me once again briefly shrivel in doubt and fear so that I would stand down and do what he said like a good little boy, the boy he wanted me to be. And though I will never know why that sight got me the way it did, as I stood there watching the blood fall from the one good eye and drip onto the floor, leaving a small trail as he approached me, I will always remember the horror of that—and the waves of emotions stemming from that horror, a raised heartbeat, music in my head that was fast and deep, crunk-sound by turning cogs and gears which had become the entirety of my life to elevate the anticipation that boiled within my mind. And I shrunk away, without thought—though a part of me when I saw that dripping eye, like a wild, instinctual and scared animal wanted to lunge defensively at his looming form.

"Little one," he said, almost cooed to me, as if the eye did not bleed as it did. His voice was unnervingly soft and only further fueled the desire within me to pounce with claws drawn, raised the beat of my heart and the sureness that any minute he would swing one of his practiced hands toward my face, and the softness as a result would tempt me easily to shriek like Beast Boy, the candle-lit card games, as if I would have rather had him screaming at me: like a horror movie, those which encompassed our Friday nights and my memory of good times, in which the suspense gradually builds, with the audience knowing the killer will pop out and feeling that knowledge turn and possess them, even though it would fall and cease the minute the killer struck; and Slade could have fooled me for a monster, without a doubt—_wicked scary._ And as the eye bleed and cried he said, "Are you talking about Terra, little one? _Is this jealousy?_"

The name and the meantion of Jealousy, some larger idea than I could in reality comprehend in its entirety, loomed over me and, like a time machine, a tempting bottle to a recovering alcoholic, forced me suddenly to revert back into old ways which had shaped my thinking since the day the little _bitch _wrecked one of my best friends' cars; the day she had mocked Raven and taken great pleasuring in _"doing away with us"—as if she thought she could actually kill us, as if this moron actually thought SHE could kill us? Who does she think she is? Who does he think he is to assume this little BITCH could kill us? Could kill ME? Did he think he could kill ME with HER? _And needless to say—there seemed very little beauty in Terra now, and our field seemed irrelevant; and I was saying in the depths of my brain and that dream, screaming, _let it burn, you little bitch, let Raven burn it…_and I could only see Terra in her outfit for Slade, could only see the smirk, the hatred, the stupidity. And so, the idea of these two words being connected to myself in regards to Slade hit me like I had had the wind knocked out of me by a solid metal baseball bat—the fact that Slade could _think—_

Needless to say, I threw my fist his way again; but needless to say, he caught it, this time, and did not show me mercy as he had before in the bedroom, when he had simply let it go; this time, he twisted my wrist around like a flashback to my past, held me there and wouldn't let me go. I began to shriek and embody that wild, caged animal I had so felt as I tried to balance my fear and defensiveness; I twisted and writhed, unlike before, however, when I had been so submissive and had simply laid there in his grip, panting, unmoving, thinking about the pointless and hateful nature of life itself as I took in the reality of my situation; but now I kicked and screamed until he could not keep me still enough by my wrist alone, and had to heave my body up and wrap his arms around me in a violent bear-hug to keep me from writhing out of his grip; and he leaned down so that he could speak into my ear, his mouth inside the mask being less than an inch from my head, making the hairs on my neck stand up, shivers sent through me and goosebumps as I felt him breath, and made a small whimper, and then a growl, slip out of my mouth as he said to me, "Of course you're jealous of her. You think I like her better, don't you, and so you're acting a bad boy to show me."

As he drew even closer to me, so that a few drops of blood splattered on my shoulder, I let out another series of whimpers and growls, these further heightened by my hatred as I could actually felt the metal of his mask, which, like the candles and their hateful patter, was freezing on the outside but hot and almost uncomfortably so on the inside, touching my cheek near the ear as he cooed again, "But don't worry, my little one, you can put her out of your mind like Joseph; and once you do we won't have to worry about another one of these little temper tantrums you're throwing. Don't worry, Robin—you have all my atten—"

I managed to kick him as I had done before; the metal boots which he had designed to provide excellent traction for fast running and agility maneuvering those places which would be intimidating to a clunky shoe crashed into his face as I flipped around, and I heard him recoil in pain and startled realization. I landed on the ground and he fell back into the wall where glass and metal shards resided and undoubtedly cut back into the already marred flesh as the eye cried its tears of crimson blood and stained the room and my own body; and I heard him exhale in the pain of that, the air being forced out of him as he was once again met with the unfortunate result of his obnoxious teasing and his sense of self-righteous entitlement, like he could do whatever he wanted to me, like he owned me. I heard him cough and realized that within the mask, he was bleeding eternally and hacking it up; and little did I know the impact had broken one of his ribs, even with his extensive armor.

In the twilight I watched his breath rise in wispy streams through the vents in his mask and mingle with my own as he slowly rose and looked at me with that one, bleeding eye, now with a hatred which reached new depths of which I had never seen of any enemy I had ever faced, for what could have been an eternity, silence prolonged and enhanced by turning gears and cogs and the sounds of the world above, where things were brighter and hatred was rarer; until suddenly, in an instant, without warning, the eye became totally red, lighting up with fervency, a sickness that boiled into this tangible hatred, as he said, his voice rising with each word he uttered,

"You ungrateful boy!" His fists were clenched so tightly he drew blood from the palms and it became apparent that he was clenching his teeth because his growl became a snarl, quickly, vehement, as ever, and the eye, now appearing to burn red like the fires of hell, narrowed so fully that I saw the furrows of a dark drown eyebrow come down and shade hatefully the eye—and then, shaking in rage, it widened as he yelled, his voice encompassing every aspect of the world, seemingly, in that moment, "You little ungrateful child! You worthless louse! _Do you KNOW who you're FUCKING with, Robin?! Do you want to DIE like the bastards in Vietnam?! DO YOU WANT TO DIE LIKE MY STUPID WIFE WHEN I SNAPPED HER NECK?!_"

And now around him a ring of fire rose; the extinguished wicks of the candles lit and flared up in streams of lava; and his fists glowed as he rose them in time with their flaring, fire bleeding from them like the eye which now was burning and predicted and assumed Fire and Brimstone; and blood poured from him as he stood within the flames, shrieking out his passion which rose from the vented mask like steam from hotbeds in volcanic climates; and as the sky blackened with ash and the ground cracked and fire rose, beneath me became the clear image of an empty and waiting coffin, and hands of flames and dark energy reached from the gaping abyss to pull me into it and to lock me inside where darkness would reign and the world could plant flowers on my grave and where I would be forgotten. My shrieks were drowned in the sounds of his own, like banshees in the swamps of foreign countries, like the sound of lost souls clamoring in darkened and abandoned hallways, as the hands dragged me down into the waiting oblong box; and as I hung desperately onto the ledge where the ground had cracked as I lost swiftly the battle to the clawing hands, I could only scream, helplessly, as it became the only word within my mind—_"Slade! Slade! SLADE! __**SLADE!**__"_

And when I was heard the hands left; fire diminished; the ground reformed, and I was still alive and present; and there was only silence except for the turning cogs and gears and the slow moaning of my name in return, "Robin…"

_Robin. Robin…Robin…_

0~0 0~0

I sat in the throne—the chair where he had so often dealt business regarding evil, watched as Terra or I were made to destroy everything we loved, watched as our most personal lives, inner secrets unfolded and revealed; I was wrapped in a blanket, shaking violently within the cold metal that surrounded me even though I had balled myself up so tightly it seemed impossible I shouldn't retain some heat. My breath rose and fell rapidly and the smoke rings became haphazard and anything but sophisticated and sultry, and quivered with my shaking body as I pulled the blanket and my old cape tighter around myself, groaning in the cold. A digital thermometer read below zero temps, while a clock read 4:52 AM. On the computer screens before me, the paneled spectacular for monitoring and observation, sported red; pictures of the bloodstream had embedded themselves in my mind for over two years, and yet now, more than quadrupled, they returned and lingered and made themselves unable to ignore as they encompassed the entirety of any motion my head could make in turning—and all I saw was the bloodstream, and the names to match.

Just another hit list:

Beast Boy

Raven

Cyborg

Starfire

Speedy

Bumble Bee

Aqualad

Más

Menos

Thunder

Lightning

Hotspot

Kid Flash

Wildebeest

Bushido

Harold

Argent

Jinx

Gizmo

Pantha

Kole

Red Star

Killowat

Terra

Jericho.

"You're not even going to ask me how I did it?" Slade said softly.

He stood in front of me, holding out a cup of something that was steaming and which really, and I mean really, looked good in consideration of the circumstances, but I didn't take it. His eye was no longer bleeding.

"I don't care," I said softly in return, shaking, my teeth chattering as I did. "It doesn't matter, does it? You did it and that's all that matters."

There was a moment of silence, and now silence was prevalent because Slade had shut down all the systems but the computer in an attempt to get the heat back working after it had shut off due to an overuse of power in recent days when the use of computers and the technology of it all in relation to that monitoring was needed for my being there more than ever; but the control for the probes was wireless and the computer had a backup generator dedicated to it, so there was not to worry, and no use for turning cogs and gears to work other features which were irrelevant in comparison, so quiet encompassed us. But it was only for the briefest of moments, and Slade said, offhandedly and very softly, almost timidly, if that were possible for someone of his character, "…Here, little one, drink this. You'll feel better and you'll probably get warmer more quickly."

He held out the beverage. From spending time with Raven I knew it was tea, and it smelled delicious. My body ached for sustenance and warmth—but though the body was drooling for the relief of what the cup would give me, undoubtedly drugged, the mind was somewhere else and refused bluntly with a look. It couldn't have cared less for warmth when it considered the matter at hand; and it responded offhandedly in the same tone as he, though lacking timidity, with exhaustion reigning like the silence. "What are you, Slade?"

The steam rose in soft wisps and dissipated over his head, into the air to be carried on the unfriendly breeze that claimed the place. The two of us stared at the thin film of steam between us, for only the smallest moment as he seemed to consider, and our emotions and thoughts seemed to meld into one clot of confusion between us, where bright from dim were undistinguishable and the past seemed so far and yet so close at the same time to the future. For once the two of us were quiet and resigned and for a moment we seemed little more than two timid people in the presence of one another—two strangers with no connection previously, as the steam cloaked us in a fog as if to keep us from rekindling the connection which had seemed to have always ruled our lives; and looking into the eye it seemed that I looked into one unknown, as no emotions were sparked and fire seemed irrelevant. I knew little anymore, and I knew that he did not, either, but he seemed to strive to preserve what his memory told him we had had, like my own:

"Drink this and we'll talk about it, Robin."

So to mimic him, before the screens showing the bloodstreams of my best friends and cherished family, I drank the tea given to me by my enemy while we lingered in mutual company; not for the warmth or relief, but for knowledge still unknown to me which became my life from then on;

Fire to reign on.

* * *

Author Note:

I was gonna update on Friday, but I had my wisdom teeth ripped out of my damn mouth and then got back from the movie Lone Survivor at like one thirty with my brother...so I was like, ah, f$$$ it, there's only like nine people following this story anyway llllloool. (FEEL BAD FOR ME, I AM A REVIEW WHORE LOL no seriously I couldn't give less of a shit). So yeah.

I'm gonna go watch ghost adventures.

I DONT LIKE BULLIES!

~Rick


	7. Steps To Enlightenment I

Steps to Enlightenment Part I—The Longing Ignorance

I think I knew the days of eating peanut butter squares with Beast Boy on the curb outside the downtown candy store or fighting over the last burger with Cyborg, reading in the grass with Raven or blushing as Starfire tucked dandelions into my hair and said I looked like one of the princes of her planet, were over the day Slade once again returned back into our lives; and I think that, from that moment on, things were never the same. These instances of friendship with my team were shrouded in warm light that made my nostalgia wonderful but somehow so painful all at once, upon remembering all the times we had shared in places that were now demolished or being replaced by office buildings, as if to defy the idea that these instances had ever actually taken place; and in being so they seemed so amazingly far away that I began to question myself—because when it came down to it, the era of things that were brighter seemed all too beautiful and naïve to have allowed to a future like this, let alone a future at all. And it seemed, sadly, that that innocence could never be regained as too much was learned and brooded upon, when new connections made terrible while somehow beautiful ties bind unlikely souls together; and my longing for times that were simply, again, just the five of us—as terrible as that sounds—fighting crime together, laughing as we chased Mumbo out of the bank to regain stolen money, and realizing how much fun we'd actually had escaping Mad Mod's funhouse (and he was just called Mad Mod then, not Carnaby-Neil Richards, the outright fashion designer who crossed Slade in the most unnerving way to me). We were young and so was everyone else; it seemed that there was not a villain we couldn't defeat or a task we couldn't overcome together—and we were sure, more than anything, that things would always be that way. There would always be the candy store for Beast Boy and I, and there would always be a warm field that five of us could sit in together in the park and be kids like we were meant to be.

Before the end of the world, which would bring about an era of darkness. The Brotherhood of Evil.

The truth was—we had grown up.

I can easily remember the first time Slade ever came into my life. The first time in our star-crossed being when the Hive-Five, then only three, Jinx, Gizmo, and Mammoth, sent to us to deliver that very thing that would become the very epicenter of my life: never-ending consumption of my mind by Slade. It is very strange, actually, to think that so many of the people who had once enveloped our lives with their presence in their crime were now what we might regard best friends, trusted, really, friends, even now after this new development of my life, because even now I know that they had nothing to do with what happened to me and that, above all else, just like us, they were just a sad group of kids looking for answers in a world which could never provide them; they were kids who all understood the world and life and yet seemed not to know they did and cloaked it in the very thing they would never have again, _innocence. _Billy was a fun kid, even knowing him for the short period of time I did; like Thunder, Lighting, but mostly Gizmo, Billy just seemed to want to have fun, and I could tell, even in those few days, that like Thunder and Lighting, crime was not something he wanted, but something which would take him from the reality of the world, and he seemed to get mixed up in the wrong group like the rest of them. Like everyone else, he started to fear the Brotherhood of Evil especially because he had escaped from the freezer unlike them, and in his sureness that they would come after him I knew he was not a threat, and knew that, like _everyone else_, he put on a face that would convey his acceptance of the new life—an attempt to convey that, like me, he was amazed at where he had ended up but did not miss the old days and strove to cloak the reality in fun, pointlessness that would inevitably remove him from the present and into somewhere brighter if only in thoughts. He didn't realize, I don't think; in fact, I don't think any of them really realized it, as Beast Boy, Kid Flash (a.k.a WW, or "Double-U"), Más and Menos, Hotspot, Harold, Thunder and Lightning, Gizmo, Billy and I tried to build a really big fort out of pillows (something, for some reason, the cloaking of life, probably, Gizmo and he really liked to do, which I found really funny), while Jinx and Raven scoffed at how stupid we were but then finally joined in later on when we told them they couldn't come in when we were done.

We had spent our lives doing things the same way, and when they changed we couldn't handle it, really, basically. We were all pretending that things were okay; we were discussing the eviction of Kyd Wykkyd, Seymore, and Mammoth, which I would inevitably agree upon because we all had the understanding that even if they were, in fact, planning to simply betray us, they most likely wouldn't fare very well against the twenty-so of us, and so they were to be removed from the freezer a few days after I was captured. I didn't know if they were free or still frozen because of the interference and problems with me being gone; though with an understanding of their inner-workings, and my own situation, I wasn't too worried—because when it all came down to it, in the end, they were kids just like us, and there was the living examples of Thunder and Lightning, now some of my best friends in the world, to make me constantly question the real evilness of someone and force me to walk in their shoes, if only briefly to understand. I knew, frankly, that they had nothing to do with my capture, or Slade—in fact, it was something I felt, surely, and I would never doubt them; because things had changed and the truth of the matter was that none of us had the courage to do anything about it; things had changed and we didn't know any longer what was right and wrong or where we should be, so we faded to anonymity and tried to lead the lives of normal teenagers we had previously been denied in our crime fighting, and to assist an enemy was too bold a feat for any of the poor, broken Hive Five, who seemed to realize where they really stood, after being defeated by us, in the world. They were using their brains more than their muscles and they lapsed into quiet passiveness; and, at first if just to ensure we wouldn't go after them, they quickly became a part of our lives which was more than just a search for protection—

Those odd connections were established, and we were all bonded, so strangely.

Of course I would not see the last of them—and Slade knew it, too.

Sometimes I would wonder whether or not this event that had changed our being and shrouded it in darkness had, too, effected our new friends—sometimes, I would sit and wonder where people like Jinx and the Hive Five were when Trigon returned and the world turned to stone; and I would speculate tiredly whether or not they, too, had been shrouded by that darkness when stone became them, if it did. I wondered if the change had come for them as it had come for us, but I was almost certain that, ultimately, there was a shift in mood in _everyone _after the occurrence of the end of the world, and a looming knowledge that things after something like that would never, really, be the same again; that the days of harmless sparring and throwing them in jail only to have them escape and repeat it all over again were over; and I began to wonder if it was that darkness that encouraged those enemies lurking ever in the shadows to rebel and join the Brotherhood of Evil, which, of course, _the epitome of darkness and shadow._ I wondered if significance of this day, the day of Raven's birth and what she, Slade, and I had done on that day, had bleed into the lives of everyone who we'd so previously regarded lightly and stirred within them something that was never there, a darkness driving a need for completion of their goal and destroying the desire within them to tease and toy and keep the game forever going. I wondered if there was more to what we did there than we had realized and wondered if darkness was not limited solely to us and encompassed the earth on a much larger scale—

If, ultimately, the change had taken everyone.

Things would never be the same again. People watched passively as the candy store was demolished and sat idly as the grass of the park was torn up.

Terra knew it, too. Things changed. She couldn't be with Beast Boy after that day; not the day that she betrayed him, not the day that Slade died, but the day that Slade came back to earth and set out to destroy it in exchange for his life. This day held significance, and I knew it. We all did.

Like my first encounter with Slade, this "last" would stand out in my mind as being one of the most frightening and suffocating, perplexing in every aspect, more than any other, even when considering the odd _apprentice_ arch or Slade's constant sparing of my life when it came to our light and almost friendly "sparring," where there seemed truthfully to be so little on the line that there was room for experimentation. This was perplexing to me at the time, of course, but looking back upon it this was so much straightforward and full of that light we would quickly lose that it seemed impossible to conceive such a shift in attitudes as we'd had it. That is, it's hard to understand how Slade could go from taking my arm as I almost tumbled to my death off the edge of a building to having an eagerness to sacrifice my life for his own—only later to profess another eagerness to rekindle our relationship if we survived our ordeal. It was so strange, and it was different, not knowing, for the first time, what Slade was really, totally thinking—not knowing if he really meant to kill me, if it mattered, or if it was just another part of his ever-lasting conquest of my apprenticeship to him. It was the first time he had become mysterious to me and it was not the last, of course; because though I'd like to think he wasn't so, I think I knew all along that when things were brighter, Slade cared for me and all revolved around this, and things were benign enough to give into his obsessions but to wonder and inquire. It seems like my naivety made it so that foreseeing something like this was impossible—and maybe secretly I believed, maybe hopefully and desperately, that no matter what I did, Slade would never kill me, and would always hold me in this positive light and continue to coddle me even when I pushed and prodded; and I will admit that though maybe in the front of my mind I tell myself Terra was a true apprentice to him, I know concretely that he was not surprised when we returned and attribute it to his conquest still raging, no questions turning my mind forever and hopelessly—because Terra was a pawn and nothing more, and both of us knew it, ultimately, though like everyone else, however in a different and much brighter light as we still lingered, we pretended not to. But when darkness took hold, "no question" became ultimately a fear cultivated inside me that rose up strongly every time I saw Slade loom menacingly over me, his eyes glowing red with that fire Trigon had given him and his hands emanating the same rage and fury and power. I wondered, each time I saw this dead man walking, whether or not this would be some of the last moments I had on this earth, and wondered subsequently what Raven and Slade would do when I was gone and dead or turned to stone, wondered darkly whether or not the two of them would live together as the only mortals in the world. Because darkness took my mind and projected what it wanted—

And Slade was darker; if only in the sense that I could not understand what he wanted, really, he was darker, and ominous, and his new powers could only serve to heighten that.

I remember that this feeling was never so profound as it had been when we had journeyed to the depths of the catacombs of the library Slade left standing amongst the block which, like our brighter past, was to be demolished; strangely, there was a hesitant quality nothing like the previous battles in which he had thrown everything at me almost carelessly, again, a stark, polar opposite of his previous morale, when it had been almost like walking on eggshells around me, a practiced and carful, almost loving thing. I would notice for the first time that he seemed to avoid, in a calculated fashion, contact with me as to prevent himself from engaging in a fight with me, as if if he did, he would be forced to harm me with these new and hateful, dark powers. I think if it weren't for Raven stepping in, and weren't for my own interference, I probably would have lived at least a little longer than the others, who he seemed intent to kill and whose lives would have undoubtedly ended there; but I think what comes down to it is the fact that, upon speculation, it might be easy to say he was simply putting us out of our misery because he knew we were going to die anyway, and not yet had that rebellion been stirred within him—but what was really perplexing to me, and would be, even as Lady Red sprung into our lives and pushed us further into the darkened realm, was the fact that Slade's true intentions seemed to fluctuate even when things should have been clear cut:

Slade would save me from one of the flame monsters we fought, one moment, and the next he would step out of the way, as if hoping it would catch me off guard enough that I might tumble into the lava and nevermore be seen. Similarly he would almost uncaringly abandon me at the fork in the road, only to return, later, as we faced Trigon, to save me when I had almost died in the wake of the devil's power. What has stood out in my mind since then is our last real transaction, the last time we would talk before the present moment, at the fork in the road, before we had parted ways. And I don't think I'll ever forget how strange everything became, how, as it is now, darkness had so far encompassed us we seemed to work emotionlessly and almost robotically, uncaringly, so far removed from one another because we were trying to get out alive while we realized that ultimately there was so little that resembled our bright past together that it really didn't matter what we did, exactly, in the wake of the events of that day. When he tumbled from the cliff we walked on, weakened by his state of death as his mind seemed to slowly descend into the insanity that was the world, and as I would learn today, heightened by Trigon's strange powers, I would slide down and, before I could stop myself, would offer my hand like I might have done to any of my companions had they fallen and needed assistance and support. I did not, and still do not, know what to think in regards to his own actions, as he reached up and gripped the hand I offered, firmly, and used it to hoist himself up; and almost automatically did I support his weight, which was considerable despite the fact that there was not much left of him but a flesh-eaten skeleton. I felt the bones briefly caress my hand, skeleton fingers digging into the flesh with a kind of desperate but somehow totally knowing and practiced, vehement, is probably the best word for it, force which I can still feel, and suppose I will never forget the exact feeling of this, like anything else memorable, though I still can't understand why it so much stood out in my mind. Arguably it was not the most disturbing thing I had ever experienced, of course—and yet I would dream about this moment in the following years so that I woke in cold sweats, panting. I would remember the way he had looked at me as he rose up, with this certainty gleaming in the one live part of him, the eye, narrowed and looking more than anything to be filled with undeniable rage, and seemed to burn in the emotions of this. But what struck me was not this, but rather the fact that mingled in this was something else far more disturbing than the solemn but passionate glare. I saw admiration and something that was, against what I wanted so badly to believe, so loving and so much like the Slade I had known when things were brighter that it seemed to overload the entire cavern, and our presences and what was being exchanged between us seemed to shake the very structure of the world and the way Trigon had changed it. As if he had just then regained the life he had lost because of what I had done, he looked at me and did not, for the first time, try to hide what he truly felt in the wake of this darkness; and what power it had had, really. Things were not the same, but I think what those skeleton hands and that lively eye did for me in that moment was remind me of our past to make me strive for what it had been, to contrast horrid darkness of our lives but mostly, set Slade prominently in my mind. To be covered my discontent, Slade was the only one strong enough to come through where it would bother me enough that I noticed. A frustration in this way—because there was something there and I knew it, and yet, no matter how I tried, I could not get to it.

Like a popcorn kernel stuck in your teeth, or a phantom hair lingering in your throat. There but unable to be fully realized.

As with the moment with the skeleton hands, I had nightmares of my experience with Slade in the later stages of our relationship before the Brotherhood of Evil, mostly engulfing the idea of his powers and how he had used them against us. To be honest, I was very frightened by them, and found myself constantly having the image of the mark of Scath burning before my eyes like an impression from some bright light. I felt the pain of those powers and, especially in the immediate aftermath of the supposed end, I woke up not only in cold sweats but with pain in my heart and stomach, as well as aches about my body and searing sensations, as if my body was burning, being pressed against hot concrete like in brighter days when a pool had been near the park, where I have strong memories of sitting outside of it with Cyborg because he couldn't swim, drinking sodas and eating nachos while watching Starfire and Beast Boy tackling one another in a failed game of marco pollo. I stayed dry for him and, on the slotted chairs, often acquired quite a burn but was never so pained as I was by the aftermath of these night terrors, and again I would realize that it all related back, in some way, to the concept of light and dark and how my mind had been divided in that way; where those burns were the result of something nice I had done to further establish connections with one of my best friends, and therefore was made worth it, these "dream burns" were foreign and totally invasive, painful, and disturbing in their nature. The morning after these sensations, I often found odd shaped rashes which were perhaps the result of these, but I did not know and never confronted Cyborg about, who could have done a diagnostic for me to find out what had caused it to appear, and instead for a few days wore a long sleeved shirt, thicker gloves, and kept my cape pinned shut over my chest where the rash prominently was. This happened three times, exactly, and stopped exactly three weeks out from the day Raven expelled her father from the world and Slade regained his body. I had the dream the third day of the week, on Tuesday night, each time; every time, I woke up at three-thirty three on the dot from the same dream, and by the third week I became increasingly horrified at pattern and similarity of each occurrence; I wondered how, if anything, I could have woken up at the same time with the same dream every Tuesday for three weeks, which seemed not to be plausible in a sensible world. And yet I seemed to skirt around the idea of the dream itself, again, the same each of the three times, perhaps because it was so terrifying in itself and shrouded by that darkness begged to be set aside in the world where I was similarly surrounded by denial, even lasting into the realization that, had I done something, my fate may have been different;

But ultimately it was not a dream I would have wanted to do much with, because of its disturbing nature—not even regarding the extra reassurances for fear that came with it, ultimately.

I had never been in a morgue before. I know that sounds odd, because I'm a crime fighter and supposedly, theoretically, most crime fighters have been at the side of a wounded victim to wish them away or a criminal who they pray will just hang on enough for them to prosecute—but ultimately to project their disappointment, regrets, wishing and beating up upon themselves that they should have done better; perhaps crime fighters circulated morgues for evidence and hung about coroners like Plummer's apprentice (a legend that Raven shared by candle light with us after we had watched an offshoot of Wicked Scary and could not go to sleep), hoping for truth above all. But I was a _vigilante_, and I actually cared very little about the prosecution, sentencing, or evidence of any of it—but more accurately, in keeping with the theme of avoiding the truth, I think what drove me from the morgues was so clearly the experiences early on with death, witnessing my parents laid out in wood coffins and decorated with these horrid, morbid dead-flower wreaths, under a gray sky but bright green turf grass. I stayed not long; the man who became my father would end up having to chase me as I ran away from the scene, away from the preacher's echoing words of God and heaven and His mercy, though as I ran down the gradual incline at the top of which they were to be buried, I saw none of this, but those dead funeral flowers and the wood of the coffins. I did not dabble in death since that day and wouldn't until my initial bond with Raven, after she'd been inside my mind and had offered to help me to expel some of the negativity that surrounded my idea of death. She told me there were not dead flowers and gray skies, which she had seen in mind, making me almost begin to cry, for whatever it was worth, but rather a warmth that succeeded anything I could imagine here in this world. She said she had been there and wanted to take me there—and before Slade's return, I thought I was ready.

Yet what would come before this warmth could come was of course the end and inevitably the dream—a morgue which I shouldn't have been able to see as clearly as I did, because I had not dabbled in death since the day of the funeral, but there it was. Gleaming in its sterile harsh and coldness, the place was so void of warmth and anything living that there seemed to be a white yet oppressive emptiness about it, like standing in a riff somewhere where life was drained so easily that the mind was too so easily made to collapse into insanity. The metal tables and the body cabinet glinted in the white light, mimicking the eye which seemed to reign so thoroughly even in this realm. On the tables, of which there were three in the room, lay three different bodies, beneath thick white sheets which encompassed their entirety and made it almost impossible to tell who lay beneath each. Their contours still defined, one had visible breasts and a small, pointy nose, a delicate waist with legs of similar deftness and arms that were long and now limp, like silk laying on a table; one had a very slender frame, but was otherwise indistinguishable to me as to who it might be; the last had a large build, and was muscular especially in the chest but slender like the second figure. The nose was similarly pointy but there was a strangeness about the eye on the right (to my left), which seemed not to exist as the sheet somehow seemed to be pulled into it, as if, similarly to the girl's arms, draped within it like rope into a black cavern. Their only visible features were feet; nude each, they sported toe-tags which were always blurred so that I could not see the name, expect that each tag was signed by the coroner—a mark which was the burning mark—the mark of Scath. And they were cold and unmoving; the only breath about the room was my own, but it was short and clearly to be dying, and in the frigid air my breath rose from me in now familiar smoke rings, as I stood over them and watched the bodies lie there, unable to move. Then from the door, a looming, metal thing which seemed likely that any minute, in its ominousness, it would simply be thrown open, or perhaps would seem to grow closer until it held me in forever, three knocks were heard. I would hear a series of three knocks about the room, repeating and echoing about the empty and lifeless place and seeming to drive me mad until my own screams echoed with them. A girl with four eyes would then rise from one of the drawers meant for bodies, shrouded in darkness, a shadow figure; she was a doll and had long, limp arms which hung down at her sides and stayed there flat when she began to slither towards me like a snake. Her glass eyes rolled until they looked at me and she said, always, three times, in a mutated voice of Raven, once so beautiful but not possessing untold depths of evil as it seemed to now, _"_تذكرني كما مررت بها، كما أنت الآن كان ذلك مرة واحدة وأنا، وأنا الآن لذلك سوف يكون، والاستعداد للموت ويتبعني_.!" _and simultaneously the chanting, like the three knocks repeated in sets, the words, "لك، الطيور_!_" were too repeated in sets by a similarly morphed voice, deep and brooding but light and in that manner suspicious and frightening, eerie, and I saw symbols appear upon my body as my clothes fell away and I was turned to stone; and silence would come except for the repetition of three consecutive taps against phantom walls.

At first, I thought Slade was absent from the dream upon my first few speculations after the first time I dreamt it on a cold, Tuesday night that past spring. And yet it was not until tonight that I would realize Slade had been in that dream all along—

Beneath the sheet.

Because when it came down to it, Slade was still tethered to Trigon, as I would learn. And when it came down to it, he was still just as helpless as he had been in those final days to do anything about it, more so than I could have ever guessed.

Weak like a corpse on a drainage table.

0~0 0~0

Despite the cold of the place, I was beginning to warm up. My shivering had stopped as I sat in the throne-chair where I vaguely could recall trying to pull a sneak attack on him when things were brighter and this darkness hadn't enveloped us; he had gotten me another blanket which I took without much caring how it made me look to him—because of course if it had been in the aftermath of any other happening, the last thing I would have done around Slade would be to show any kind of weakness, but I was buzzing with the knowledge that threw me into dim passiveness that it really did not matter any longer, because there were already so many things we could have used against one another—and I kept myself wrapped up as tightly as I could manage without making my arms sore. The tea he had brought me was really good, too, and also managed to warm me up quite a bit; not that I might have needed it, because I think after having shut down my emotions after once again for the first time in years dabbling in cold death, because that, of course, was in keeping with the theme of ignorance the key to at least something like bliss, what I could gain, I was calmer than he himself was, though perhaps only outwardly, and probably wouldn't have needed it. But my throat had dried from my screaming, and it felt very good to drink it, even if, most likely, it had some kind of drug to lull me to sleep put in it and taking affect, perhaps calming me further. I did feel kind of sleepy but was not, by any means, ready to go back to bed just yet.

In fact—if I didn't get some answers from him, I wouldn't. Like back in the cave with the fire-demons.

"Do you know how long it's been?" he would ask me.

"I don't know," I said, removed, sipping the tea slowly and inhaling its aroma, fully enjoying it. I didn't need to be told it was drugged, because the first few sips had already alerted me to the fact that a normal tea couldn't make me feel the way this did. And to be honest, I really didn't care; I figured I would pass out soon but as long as I heard what I needed, it didn't matter, because in the end, I was not worried at all for my own health—not even so much because I trusted Slade but because I seemed not to really care any longer what happened to me, because I of course had a looming knowledge of the truth I had tried so long to put off but seemed so totally inevitable now as I looked at the list of all my best friends staring hatefully back at me, that, ultimately, they would all be better off if I was not there to potentially hurt them; and unlike what Slade thought, I did remember the rules and didn't need to be reminded when the real question was _how could I forget? _"It's been a few years, I think. We've been fighting the Brotherhood of Evil so long I don't even really know anymore."

He nodded, slowly, looking at me. "Yes, I know. I was worried, you know."

"Worried?" I downed the rest of the tea.

He nodded again. "Yes, Robin, I was. The four of them are some very terrible people, but you know that. They're persistent little fuckers and worse than the Viet Cong in their slyness."

"Yeah." Considering _I hadn't actually fought_ _in that war_, I was surprised I gave him that much credit—but my removed, cold and sarcastic way of thinking probably says enough itself.

"Do you want some more, Robin? I bet you're thirsty," he said, and took the cup out of my hands without waiting for an answer.

"Thanks," I said slowly, watching without much interest as he poured more tea into the cup. Still in the beginning of our new relationship, I wondered very vaguely how things would work now, in the back of my mind debating whether or not it would be like the way my dad had treated me or something else—though again, it little mattered, especially in consideration to everything else I was now learning, with its subsidiary knowledge also tacked on to the growing pile of things to consider. Ignoring the fact that he said he was worried for me—which of course implied that he had probably been _watching _as I fought the BHE, and a host of other things like, _why was he watching in the first place, or, how did he know to watch?_—I wondered dimly his relation to the BHE and ended up getting him and myself sidetracked from the real issue at hand—that of, um, _how in hell did he open up a riff in space and use some demon hands to drag me down into a black and white coffin like freakin' Harold while a bunch of flames shot out from his body?!_—when I voiced it almost automatically as I took again the cup of tea, now full and again tempting. "How do you know them?"

I heard a soft chuckle arise from the mask, though I noticed it was weaker now than it had been. "They offered me membership, Robin."

"Membership," I repeated, a statement because somehow I wasn't surprised, and said, again with the same almost automations, "So why didn't you take it?"

He paused for a minute, seeming to consider whether or not he wanted to launch into what I assumed would be probably a pretty big and even impressive story—though for my sake thankful he too seemed to realize that it wasn't the matter at hand. "Another time, little one. I know you're curious but it isn't really relevant right now, and as far as I'm concerned they're really not worth our time, right?"

"Right." I calmly sipped the tea, looking at the screen with eyes that must have looked blank, and there was a pause.

"There are a lot of things going through your mind right now, aren't there, Robin?" he would say finally, slowly, looking down at me, with something that almost resembled sympathy as I too returned his gaze and stared into the eyes after having some trouble taking it off the names on the screen. Raven's had stood out to me, as if it was bolded and underlined while the others, though they were important, of course, but seemingly irrelevant in the moment, were the same color as the red blood that offset them. When I looked at the screen I had not been able to take my eyes off the letters and everything I said seemed to be time-wasting excuse so that I could continue to stare at the name, transfixed, and even when I turned away, I could still see the name burned before my eyes, which, set upon Slade, shifted immediately into the mark of Scath—and yet, I would continue to stare at him blankly as I drank more tea.

"I just have one question to start off with," I said slowly, and sipped again.

"Go ahead."

"Does Scath speak Arabic?"

I drank the tea, but I was a step closer to enlightenment.

* * *

Author Note:

Ha la la-we getting arab money. you want this hook you gon' pay that money.

Yeah, I am so tired. SOOOOO tired. Goodnight, childs.

~Son


End file.
